I'm sure the Horizon is wonderful but it's that I'm not a believer in tubes in dacs, to me it’s a way of "sweetening" the sound at the expense of "lowering" other wanted parameters. Silicon does a far better "truer" "direct coupled" job IMHO. I'd like to hear what the original musical piece sounded like, whatever that might have been.
The New Lampizator Horizon DAC
On Saturday, I was lucky enough to be invited to the unofficial launch of the all-new Lampizator Horizon DAC in Los Angeles. I have a Pacific and love it but I was intrigued to experience whether the Horizon was that much better. So, My wife and I drove the 6 hours from Arizona to attend.
The event had about 18 people in attendance and featured Lukasz Fikus, the owner and brains behind Lampizator. We had a 5-hour listening session which included direct A/B comparisons between the Pacific and the Horizon, operating the Horizon without a preamp, and finally tube rolling.
My impressions were the Lampizator created a DAC that could change people's minds on comparing digital to vinyl, The amount of detail, smoothness, clarity, speed was incredible. For those interested in tube rolling the options are almost endless and I heard firsthand many different tube combinations which changed the SQ of the music. Finally, at the end of the session, we ran the Horizon without a preamp. The preamp used in the system was Lamm and the whole system was well over $700k. So we are talking about a very high-end component grouping. IMO, the Horizon DAC delivered about 95% of the sound without a Preamp. It was super hard to discern any differences in SQ.
This DAC was so good that I ended up ordering one. For anyone going to the Tampa Audio show, Lukasz Fikus will be there to officially launch the Horizon to the world this weekend. It is definitely worth a listen.