New Lampizator Level 4/ Version 4 DAC in the house

Agear - look, there is nothing sinister about my comments of tubes not being the best choice for digital. Any EE worth his salt will agree with this. I have 30 years of salt in my ears.

This is a lot like the habit that many designers have to use HC logic family for digital circuits that must maintain low-jitter. Makes no sense at all, except to those that don't understand the physics.

There also companies that offer tube analog buffer stages that don't understand why these are interesting. They actually do work well in many cases. It has to do with replacing a low-drive strength DAC output buffer with one with high drive strength, better adapted to drive a cable with capacitance. The ideal thing would just have a better output stage in the DAC.

There is a lot of blind leading the blind designers out there. Sometimes bad habits and choices get copied. I've seen it all. Even junior designers from Sony making fundamental errors in high-end CDPs. Modding a LOT of components for over 10 years opened my eyes.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Agear - did you go to THE Show at CES?

I'm sorry to say that the Lampizator room did not have one of the best sounds at the show. It was just average. The speakers were brand new and the room was very small. I however, liked what I saw and after talking with the head man himself ordered one. I hope I will like it as time will tell.

Best room at The Show was Zesto Audio with the Merrill TT. Having George Merrill there himself didn't hurt either. Found him quite entertaining. Like JWM found the Lampizator room average. That said nothing touched the Highwater Sound room at the Venetian. Okay a little biased as they used our 300B's, but I was working the Concert Fidelity room and while the TAD CR-1s were quite good, those Cessaro's are to die for.

Thanks Andrew, ya I was a little too sensitive and your right that I should start my own system thread. I will as soon as I can post my virtual system.