For the chap behind these products, the proof is in the eating - the 2nd best sound at the Sydney hifi show was sourced through one of his units. How was it 'good'? Zero 'digital edge', the ability to throw up a big sound space, full of fine detail, that you could mentally walk into - no low level 'nasties' lurking to slowly wear down your interest in continuing to listen ...
Yup, very predictable
I always said that High-End is dead since a "fool" with soldering iron in a garage can do as well or better. The follow up responses should be that its only because it looks like a vomit the sound has that special spectacular quality and any effort to make the unit looking like the maker respects his customer or rules of craft would make the sound to go south. Sure , if it sounds better than $15k dacs it is certainly worth the mere $4.5k , a rare bargain actually.
Yet it looks like a bodge job, there are no real digital techniques used, it all pays homage to audiofool design and boutique components...I would love to see some measurements.
Of course I expect something that by construction is going to accentuate any digital problems to sound great and have no digital artefacts, whereas when we do a 50 channel phase array board using all the right engineering ways it obviously wont work because we in the real world don't know what we are doing. The only reason it gets rave revues because it fits the bill, hand made, audiophile capacitors, valves (are these valves filtering or just output). My bet is that it would struggle to pass any EMC tests, and there is lots of distortion that true audiophiles seem to love, as for jitter and other digital artefacts.
At the end of the day though non of this is any excuse for selling a commercial product that is put together so badly, and looks like my grandkids assembled it, nor is it any excuse for not following real engineering practices especially when it comes to digital...
like I have said I would be ashamed to show the insides of a component I had assembled and built if it looked like that.
Any pointers to measurements or white papers by this lot would be grateful received, I am dying to read their views on grounding of digital and mixed signal systems.
Oh and when I listen to digital based recordings I CANNOT hear these dreaded digital artefacts that so many audiophiles claim to hear, I am beginning to think it is just mass hysteria, or one of the tenets of the Audiophile religion, along with silver cables sound brighter, physics is for numskulls, bags of stones can effect the sound and aerospace engineers moonlight to create super doper components and systems that you never see in real world electronics.........
Arrrggggghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!
Of course I expect something that by construction is going to accentuate any digital problems to sound great and have no digital artefacts, whereas when we do a 50 channel phase array board using all the right engineering ways it obviously wont work because we in the real world don't know what we are doing. The only reason it gets rave revues because it fits the bill, hand made, audiophile capacitors, valves (are these valves filtering or just output). My bet is that it would struggle to pass any EMC tests, and there is lots of distortion that true audiophiles seem to love, as for jitter and other digital artefacts.
At the end of the day though non of this is any excuse for selling a commercial product that is put together so badly, and looks like my grandkids assembled it, nor is it any excuse for not following real engineering practices especially when it comes to digital...
like I have said I would be ashamed to show the insides of a component I had assembled and built if it looked like that.
Any pointers to measurements or white papers by this lot would be grateful received, I am dying to read their views on grounding of digital and mixed signal systems.
Oh and when I listen to digital based recordings I CANNOT hear these dreaded digital artefacts that so many audiophiles claim to hear, I am beginning to think it is just mass hysteria, or one of the tenets of the Audiophile religion, along with silver cables sound brighter, physics is for numskulls, bags of stones can effect the sound and aerospace engineers moonlight to create super doper components and systems that you never see in real world electronics.........
Arrrggggghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!
Yes sir. It's so sad to me. They love to drink the subjective Kool-Aid >>>>
Fun thread though thanks for the link
Lampizator is quite popular builder of custom audio electronics in Poland. Although I don't subscribe to he's "lampization" CD and DAC theories, I consider these products fine for one-man shop.
BTW, compared to $12,000 CD player and $55,000 DAC 5 Signature (with AD1865 inside) from AudioNote UK it is not that expensive.
PS. There are no sound logic on boutique and luxury item market and probably never be.
BTW, compared to $12,000 CD player and $55,000 DAC 5 Signature (with AD1865 inside) from AudioNote UK it is not that expensive.
PS. There are no sound logic on boutique and luxury item market and probably never be.
Last edited:
Marce, that system did have problems with interference, whether due to EMC or other factors I can't say, nor which aspect of the system was reacting -- when running off a music server, the normal configuration, it was fine, but degraded very significantly when fed from a CD transport.
How can I hear these things? Well, no-one gets excited when someone says they hear differences between speakers, this is totally acceptable behaviour - hearing differences between source components is the same deal, the subjective impression of what you're hearing alters, and if you then go about it methodically you can track down precisely where the sound has altered, where the distortion is ...
Frank,
I have an old Kenwood CD player, a Marantz CD63 (now poorly) also numerous DVD players and Blu Ray players. I do perceive the presentation between the Kenwood and the modern Blu Ray/DVD players different, and If I was to wax lyrical, I find the Kenwood more listenable, though the Blu Rays are not optimised for music reproduction so the output stages are almost an afterthought (chip based, not op-amps) whereas the Kenwood (and the Marantz were optimised for music). So I am not a total cloth ears and I do listen and notice sound differences. This is the reason why all my CD's went on to a dedicated PC, it was cheaper than a new dedicated CD player, I use numerous Logitech CD players wirelessly so have no problems with the PC noise, and when funds allow I will upgrade to a newer wireless system. Mainly because the logitechs are now defunct, but for the next few years this system will suffice.
But I also measure and if I suspect noise or distortion I will get things checked out, and doing a lot of work for Communication Systems I am lucky in that I can pester to well qualified engineers to do this for me properly, so I am lucky.
By the same token I see regularly how well digital audio transmission works and how solid it is.
Marc
I have an old Kenwood CD player, a Marantz CD63 (now poorly) also numerous DVD players and Blu Ray players. I do perceive the presentation between the Kenwood and the modern Blu Ray/DVD players different, and If I was to wax lyrical, I find the Kenwood more listenable, though the Blu Rays are not optimised for music reproduction so the output stages are almost an afterthought (chip based, not op-amps) whereas the Kenwood (and the Marantz were optimised for music). So I am not a total cloth ears and I do listen and notice sound differences. This is the reason why all my CD's went on to a dedicated PC, it was cheaper than a new dedicated CD player, I use numerous Logitech CD players wirelessly so have no problems with the PC noise, and when funds allow I will upgrade to a newer wireless system. Mainly because the logitechs are now defunct, but for the next few years this system will suffice.
But I also measure and if I suspect noise or distortion I will get things checked out, and doing a lot of work for Communication Systems I am lucky in that I can pester to well qualified engineers to do this for me properly, so I am lucky.
By the same token I see regularly how well digital audio transmission works and how solid it is.
Marc
You listen to cds off a PC and use Logitech CD players and have the cheek to criticise Lampizator...
Not much point in getting things measured if you are happy with the sound from the above.
Lampizators products would be wasted on you me think.
Marce, you need to understand that because you haven't spent a fortune on designer CD players and interconnects etc. that renders any opinion you have worthless and any knowledge and experience you claim in logic or mixed-signal design to be irrelevant. Unless you worship in the only true way you are of no consequence. You have committed a sin equivalent to telling a small child that Father Christmas might not be quite what he appears to be.
My take on this is that lampizator dac probably sounds excellent compared to other dacs in similar topology. It is surely more labor intensive than most of them which normally would qualify for higher asking price .People are really willing to pay for esoteric well "oiled" by trendy so called independent reviewers especially if somebody has a nice blog like lampizator. I'm just not sure his construction techniques are a sign of disdain to industry standards and approved models or he simply is a sloppy builder unable or unwilling to make it better than spreading blobs of hot glue all over the chassis.
I have other stuff, but is there anything wrong with my set up other than it not being an audiophiles wet dream, so don't be so insulting.
Oh you might as well criticize my speakers OB active, my amps mono block SETs with hand wound transformers etc I don't care.
But I do work in the electronics industry on high rel and top end electronics and specialise in complex digital layout eo I know crap when I see it.
Over the years I have had a host of equipment from Kef speakers 104/2, audiolab, Marantz, TDL etc etc so I have listened and owned a mixture of equipment, further being the son of a quite famous musician in her day, I had to endure piano lessons from 4, trombone lessons from 8 and played Bass guitar for fun as a teenager, so maybe I am as qualified to have an opinion as you patronising AFs with your bespoke cables and bybee QFs pontificating how the new power cord lifted a veil from the sound, the change wasn't subtle even the wife in the kitchen realised that a £2000 interconnect or £700 USB cable sounds no different from an Asda (Wallmart) £5 one.
Of course if some of you audiophiles actually understood electronics and such like and did some measurements you'd be surprised, but to castigate someone for using a Logitech squeeze box just shows how pathetic and narrow minded you all are, especially when you all moan about PC noise, and try solve it with special cables
I don't play the CD's they are all on disc as uncompressed WAV files actually so I don't have to suffer the problems of spinning the CD in a player.
Last edited:
From the pictures, the PCBs have their own ground plane, but are connected to one main star ground.
It is a few years since I last visited his site, but I remember it as being chatty but mistaken, plausible (to those not in the know) but "original". I guess this might seem to be a "nice blog" to some people.limono said:
Ugly circuits can sometimes work quite well. Bad circuits cannot, but given a sufficiently 'good' supporting story many people will suspend what critical faculties they have and accept problems; even sometimes preferring the problems.
As I have said before, I blame all this on the poor state of science education in our schools.
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.