"To Lampi or not to Lampi?....That is the question." by William Shake-it-up

FlexibleAudio said:
Sorry to hear about your Mom. (I lost mine in January.) First things first. I wish you the best.

When you get time however, I would love to hear your thoughts regarding the Berkeley Ref and Lampi 7. (Probably my top two contenders.)
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Hey Paul..... I will definitely pass along my thoughts on those two, when I get the new Lampi Big 7. It should be here within the next 7 to 10 days. The one quality that struck me with the Lampi was timing cues, a very natural reverberant hall sound, and instrument/singer placement in the soundstage. Having been involved with live music for nearly 30 years, my hair will stand up when this timing is right. I only judge these factors from a live miked recording. I have some such recordings that were made as demos back in the 70's and 80's of jazz and fusion bands in small clubs. If the playback equipment is up to snuff, it can transport you back to that moment.
These are qualities that many may not look for, if their experience is light in intimate music settings. But it certainly can flesh out a realism that is rare to find. We all have different qualities that grab our subjective attention. YMMV.
 
JDLaudio said:
Hey Paul..... I will definitely pass along my thoughts on those two, when I get the new Lampi Big 7. It should be here within the next 7 to 10 days. The one quality that struck me with the Lampi was timing cues, a very natural reverberant hall sound, and instrument/singer placement in the soundstage. Having been involved with live music for nearly 30 years, my hair will stand up when this timing is right. I only judge these factors from a live miked recording. I have some such recordings that were made as demos back in the 70's and 80's of jazz and fusion bands in small clubs. If the playback equipment is up to snuff, it can transport you back to that moment.
These are qualities that many may not look for, if their experience is light in intimate music settings. But it certainly can flesh out a realism that is rare to find. We all have different qualities that grab our subjective attention. YMMV.
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I think a major driver of how great the Big 7 is said to sound could be the DHTs. I auditioned a Wavelength Crimson single ended DAC over a year ago and it had a lot of these same qualities. The soundstage and lifelike imaging were truly amazing. I decided to go for the Esoteric K-01 because of the Crimson's use of lead acid batteries in its design.

Ken
 
Alpinist said:
I think a major driver of how great the Big 7 is said to sound could be the DHTs. I auditioned a Wavelength Crimson single ended DAC over a year ago and it had a lot of these same qualities. The soundstage and lifelike imaging were truly amazing. I decided to go for the Esoteric K-01 because of the Crimson's use of lead acid batteries in its design.

Ken
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I agree with the DHT point but also what he does with unconverted raw data, I am guessing, is a big part of the DSD magic.
 
Ok, every time I think I am getting somewhere with the Lampi I bump my noggin on someone's negative waves. This time the waves come from Ted Brady, a long time DSD proponent.


"As you know I had three (3) of Luckasz's DACs in my home, and all three threw so much DC into my signal path that I feared for my amps' life. They would shut down violently (thank goodness they shut down)."
Article: Chord Electronics QuteHD Review - Page 9


"The Lampis (3 of them) shut down my amps with much too much dc (one of the risks of doing only analog filtering; the other being the garbling sometimes heard from noise modulation) so I stay away from that”
Chord Hugo Re-Examined - Page 1


"the DC that is inherently part of DSD would shut down my amps on three early Lampis."
Best DSD DAC(s) - Recommendations


These comments are particularly troublesome for me because a big part of the attraction I have for the Lampi is the way they handle raw DSD.

Can anyone help me understand why this approach inherently causes excessive DC?

How is Lukasz managing this issue?

Why was it a problem with Ted's Modwright monoblocks and not others?? It is my understanding the last DAC Ted had is the same exact DAC that went from Ted to Bruce Brown and he declared it DAC of the year!

I am soooo confused! Where is Norman when I need him? :(
 
FlexibleAudio said:
Can anyone help me understand why this approach inherently causes excessive DC?
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Most likely a flawed amp design. I have just talked about this with Łukasz, and he told me that he only once had this problem out of 1000 DACs sold, and that was Ted. He told me thay have sent him 3 or 4 DACs, and none of them worked with his amp.

You have to understand that every single DAC with anode follower circuit topology (and Big 7 runs DHT triodes in single ended anode follower configuration) will have some DC present at the output. However, after you load the output with an amp, the DC will be in the mV region - unlikely to cause problems with 99,999% of solid state amps.

If your amp is extremely sensitive to DC, you can always use the Lampi DSD, which has a cathode follower circuit topology, so only have about 1/20th of the DC present of the Big 7.

It is important to understand, that this is typical to ANY tube DAC or a preamp, not only Lampi, and has nothing to do with DSD or type of filtering !
 
Elberoth said:
Most likely a flawed amp design. I have just talked about this with Łukasz, and he told me that he only once had this problem out of 1000 DACs sold, and that was Ted. He told me thay have sent him 3 or 4 DACs, and none of them worked with his amp.

You have to understand that every single DAC with anode follower circuit topology (and Big 7 runs DHT triodes in single ended anode follower configuration) will have some DC present at the output. However, after you load the output with an amp, the DC will be in the mV region - unlikely to cause problems with 99,999% of solid state amps.

If your amp is extremely sensitive to DC, you can always use the Lampi DSD, which has a cathode follower circuit topology, so only have about 1/20th of the DC present of the Big 7.

It is important to understand, that this is typical to ANY tube DAC or a preamp, not only Lampi, and has nothing to do with DSD or type of filtering !
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info Adam. I thought it very strange that several dacs would cause the same problems. Was he using dacs with volume control....and running direct ??
 
Adam,

As always good stuff. Modright runs only 15K input impedance...that's pretty low. Do you think that might be part of the problem? If that is the case, do you think with the Lampi run to my Soulution 721 (47k ohms input resistance unbalanced) I should expect no issues??
 
FlexibleAudio said:
Ok, every time I think I am getting somewhere with the Lampi I bump my noggin on someone's negative waves. This time the waves come from Ted Brady, a long time DSD proponent.


"As you know I had three (3) of Luckasz's DACs in my home, and all three threw so much DC into my signal path that I feared for my amps' life. They would shut down violently (thank goodness they shut down)."
Article: Chord Electronics QuteHD Review - Page 9


"The Lampis (3 of them) shut down my amps with much too much dc (one of the risks of doing only analog filtering; the other being the garbling sometimes heard from noise modulation) so I stay away from that”
Chord Hugo Re-Examined - Page 1


"the DC that is inherently part of DSD would shut down my amps on three early Lampis."
Best DSD DAC(s) - Recommendations


These comments are particularly troublesome for me because a big part of the attraction I have for the Lampi is the way they handle raw DSD.

Can anyone help me understand why this approach inherently causes excessive DC?

How is Lukasz managing this issue?

Why was it a problem with Ted's Modwright monoblocks and not others?? It is my understanding the last DAC Ted had is the same exact DAC that went from Ted to Bruce Brown and he declared it DAC of the year!

I am soooo confused! Where is Norman when I need him? :(
Click to expand...


What is the probable explanation for the garbling sometimes heard from noise modulation?

Ken
 
FlexibleAudio said:
Adam,

As always good stuff. Modright runs only 15K input impedance...that's pretty low. Do you think that might be part of the problem? If that is the case, do you think with the Lampi run to my Soulution 721 (47k ohms input resistance unbalanced) I should expect no issues??
Click to expand...

DC has nothing to do with impedance, input or output, or volume attenuation.

Slight DC at the output is sth all tube DACs have to deal with, as capacitors used at the output to block DC (that is their purpose) are not perfect, and always leak small amouts od DC.

Every tube DAC, and every tube pre, has this 'problem'.
 
Elberoth said:
You have to understand that every single DAC with anode follower circuit topology (and Big 7 runs DHT triodes in single ended anode follower configuration) will have some DC present at the output. However, after you load the output with an amp, the DC will be in the mV region - unlikely to cause problems with 99,999% of solid state amps.

DC has nothing to do with impedance, input or output, or volume attenuation.

Slight DC at the output is sth all tube DACs have to deal with, as capacitors used at the output to block DC (that is their purpose) are not perfect, and always leak small amouts od DC.

Every tube DAC, and every tube pre, has this 'problem'.
Click to expand...


Adam I understand the presence of DC in a tube device is not related to the impedance on the attached amp, but I was wondering about the load the amp shows the tube device being large enough to suppress its DC to negligible levels.
 
What is it that the Lampi DAC does with DSD that is so different from other DACs that have DSD functionality?

Ken
 
Alpinist said:
What is it that the Lampi DAC does with DSD that is so different from other DACs that have DSD functionality?

Ken
Click to expand...


Ken,

The big thing to me is no DAC chip. You can actually play back the electrical pulses direct from the file and it is music! All you need to do is filter the stream to keep out the unwanted frequencies. To me this seams much closer (than converting PCM) to what happens when a needle is mechanically activated and then creates electric pulses through the induction in a coil. I question if this is part of why DSD sounds so much more like analog to many people than PCM, but someone a lot smarter than me would need to explain this phenomena. All that I know is that a lot of people I respect have found this technique sounds very analog for a digital source.

See the quote below from Lampi.


"THE LAMPIZATOR DSD DAC HAS USB PORT BUILT IN, SOLID STATE DIGITAL FILTER, PASSIVE DISCRETE ANALOG FILTER AND ACTIVE DISCRETE TUBE FILTER. IT DOES NOT MANIPULATE THE DATA IN ANY SHAPE OR FORM, IT DOES NOT CONVERT IT, UPSAMPLE, RECLOCK OR DOWNSAMPLE. IT DOES NOT GO THROUGH PCM PROCESS EITHER. IT IS PUREST NATIVE DSD WE KNOW OF. WE PRACTICALLY ONLY GENTLY REMOVE THE CARRIER FREQUENCY FROM THE RAW DATA AS IT COMES FROM HARD DRIVE. NOTHING MORE NOTHING LESS."

 
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