No problem GT.
You have put your points across in a civil way and I appreciate the discourse.
One last point. VT99 is just that. I dont know about the equivalents, but he has repeatedly told me that it is too difficult to get the NOS VT99 and not avaialable in commercial quantities for anything but a custom Level 5 job. He said he was checking other NOS tubes that may work even better and are much more readily available.
In any case, the new semi-active summator circuit effectively eliminates almost all tube sonic signature, so the choice of tubes becomes secondary. A good thing for him, because when he standardizes with fewer tube/chip variables, he is able to optimize the circuit in such a way as to avoid certain parts that impair the sound slightly. I dont know any more about the technicalities than that.
What I do know for a fact is that the Level 2 I bought in Oct 2010 sounded great and since the upgrade in July, it has taken a quantum leap in performance. That receiver chip (apparently a pain in the butt to work with) is da bomb! Details like never before.
I have no idea what make/model the DAC and the receiver chips are. He wont tell me and I dont blame him (recall that he has started a commercial business, even if its more of an audio boutique). It is his livelihood. This is nothing against his beloved DIY community. It is more about fear of cheap Chinese knock offs. They would try to duplicate parts with an vastly inferior implementation and then try to pass it off on Ebay as a Lampizator clone. We have all seen similar things happen.
I am not a techie and dont pretend to be. I am not affiliated with him either (he could not afford it anyway as a budding/struggling/optimistic entrepreneur). I am a customer who just admires what he has created and am willing do a little bit to help him get on his feet by spreading the word. It is great when we find people who push the envelope. I also am in contact with people who will make new speaker drivers (paradigm shift) and new open baffle DSP transducers and if when they are successfully developed, i probably will evangelize those too if they represent true breakthroughs. People can then make up their minds if they agree or not, but at least they will know.
If a giant tree falls in a big forest and nobody hears....did it happen....does it matter? LoL
Thanks, Winson for seeing I am just trying to put forth a differing point of view and not necessarily contrarian. I understand where Lukasz is coming from and he through his many years of experimentation has more than earned the right to make points about his designs. There is some marketing hype too, or puffing, which is the legal term for it. I am ok with that, too. I guess what sets off alarm bells is when people en masse get so worked up about this kind of stuff. It is just stuff or junk, with some of it being better than others. We all have our gurus and mentors, and it is just fine to support them and get the word out of something you feel is great.
I tend to be perhaps overly critical, but when it comes to a commercial product and claims made about it, fair challenge and question is certainly appropriate. Nothing personal. For example, I am a satisfied customer of Empirical Audio. The owner, Steve Nugent, is also a great guy to deal with and certainly has a great deal of technical and practical know how. He is basically a small proprietorship and probably smaller than Lampizator. He also has a dac that has reviewed very well. Personally, I would be willing to buy his dac on a leap of faith, given past experience. There are not many other products I would buy that way, but that is me. It is in part that he makes claims that are supported in technical terms and his products, at least to me, perform at or above what he says.
So enjoy the Lampizator. I am sure that it is great and will give you much pleasure.
