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New Lampizator Level 4/ Version 4 DAC in the house

Wonder if any other new owners of this DAC are out there as I find it to be the finest digital playback I have heard to date. This is the first digital front end piece of gear I have owned that has transformed my music.

Ya, other digital gear does this or that better, but this Lampy breaks through to a new level of musical enjoyment. Clear view into the music helping the speakers just disappear. Only 24 hours of break in and the music flows so sweet, intimate and seemingly without boundaries.

Looking under the hood I see an impressive power supply with films caps and several high quality chokes. Point to point silver wired except for the digital and USB boards. This is a three tube player that is tube rectified. One has the option for SS rectification if desired.

Ya, I love this Lampy!
128x128grannyring
agear
1,362 posts
 
The Offramp and Dynamo together jumped the performance of my Lampi and digital front end at least 50%.

Shawbros might argue with you but I believe it. Dynamo means non-chinese walwart ps?

The DAC is important, very important, but what it is fed is perhaps more important. I will make a bold statement here. I bet my Lampi 4/4 with the Offramp/Dynamo sounds better than a Lampi 5,6 or 7 with no Lampi or Offramp transport.

I am glad you have finally been converted. I made that same statement earlier in the thread and you actually argued with me. Your modded mini was king at the time.:)
agear
1,362 posts
 
This is what I say on every forum. The jitter of the digital source is MORE IMPORTANT than the DAC. It's true. And Empirical Audio has been developing lower and lower jitter products for more than 15 years.

One could argue that any dac worth its salt should be able to process jitter much like old school engineer types who say that any well designed power supply should not need power conditioning.

Steve, the Ifi crew claims lower jitter specs than Offramp at a fraction of the cost (http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2013/04/amr-ifi-announce-ilink-usb-spdif-converter/). Any comments?

Transports and jitter busters aside, you can not turn the chinese dac du jour into a Lampizator 7 with jitter management....:)
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
"Steve, the Ifi crew claims lower jitter specs than Offramp at a fraction of the cost (www.digitalaudioreview). Any comments?"

I don't know where they get this. Send me an iFi and i'll publish the jitter distributions of OR5 and iFi.

In the end what matters is how the device sounds when connected to a DAC, not how it measures when connected to a test system anyway.

I don't see any iFi things taking best of show at Newport or RMAF. They have their pricepoint and I have mine.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
wisnon
700 posts
 
Grannyring,

If you buy a modded DVD player from the Lampi shop of just buy the digi-Lampizator kit 100euros and add to say a Denon DVD3910, you get astounding performance. Myself, I have just the Spdif modded Denon (no digi mod) and i disabled all the video sections, etc. Best spinner I have.

I also use a stock Duet with upograded caps and deicated LPSU and that is great.

Point is jitter is only half the story. Power (waveform distortion) is the other.
I think its too much to say low jitter is the end all and be all of good sound. Its important, yes, but not all.

Many ways to skin a cat.
grannyring's avatar
grannyring OP
6,567 posts
 
Agear, the wallwart on the unit was actually much better than a standard wart as Steve does use/make a good one. The separate Dynamo power supply is much, much better however.

I don't know the science as well as I should regarding jitter, waveform distortion and the like, but boy is my rig smoking good after these last additions!
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