Lampizator Komputer vs. Aurender N10

Keith_W

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If you feel you can build a better audiophile computer for much cheaper than the Lampi Komputer then more power to you. But for the average non-tech savvy audiophile such as myself, Lampi is offering a really nice alternative for an audiophile quality computer. It is basically the same computer that Mike and many other audiophiles have had to assemble themselves brought together in one turn-key unit complete with the latest and greatest music software. Sounds like a great deal to me.

Ken, every desktop computer I have ever owned, I have built myself. I am sure other computer builders will agree with me on this point: building a computer is not hard. What is hard is choosing the parts, and even that is not too hard. It gets a bit more tricky if you want to build a computer for a specialist application - e.g. for an "audiophile" computer, you might want it to be fanless and fit in a small form factor case with no moving bits inside. Then you'll have to think about what CPU cooler will work for you, find a fanless power supply that will still fit in your case, buy cards that are not too tall or long, etc etc. Even when you get the whole kit together, you might find something silly ... like the path of your CPU heatpipe might prevent you from installing a card.

It is not the building that is difficult, it is the shopping.

If I had a list of parts that that Lampi was built from, for sure I could replicate it at much lower cost. They have already done the most difficult part of the build for me - that is, find the parts that will work for this application. And remember - I am no computer genius, I am just an idiot with a screwdriver.
 
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Blizzard

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RubenV.

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What does Phil recommend for best Mobo? Did you see the spec for Elberoth's Server?

In any case, i already TOLD you that Lukasz already upgraded his Server from what you see written some 2-3 months ago…

It seems like you are just trying to brag that you think your personally built server is better. I doubt it given the advanced I heard abot when I got an update last week, but who knows?

Next think is you are gonna say you are better than the Sound Galleries upcoming Server as well.

Nope, I am not here to brag since I do not have something to brag about. My dual streamer setup is good, but certainly not the most advanced out there. I am not commenting on the sound of both the Lampi Komputer nor the Aurender since I never had the chance to compare these two with my own setup. Like I mentioned before I simply replied because I was triggered by sentences like the best of the best and so on. Since we both do not know what the new approved version of the Lampi Komputer contains in terms of hardware we can only guess of it contains something magic, since it is not stated on the website.
However, seeing that it is not a dual pc setup, and the fact there are mechanical moving parts in it I know from experience a dual system without any moving parts sounds the best I've heard so far. And I tried quit a couple of different setups during the last five years. It would be awesome of the Lampi Komputer or Aurender could prove me wrong though.

@Alpinist: I do understand not everybody has the time to build there own. Again, I joined this discussion because of the marketing talk I saw combined with the use of stock and moving parts. Besides that, 6K is a hefty price if you recon that the parts are maybe half it. But I guess there is market for it, and ofcourse we should not forget things like service and so on... I can truly understand that for some people it is a good option.

@Keith_W: The shopping could be difficult if you want to use real audiophile computer parts. But if you read an hour on computeraudiophile.com you would know what's available (like the JCAT and PPA stuff) and what is a good practice of incorporate these parts (like no mechanical moving parts and so on). Installing the parts is not difficult, like you mentioned. I guess building a gaming rig with watercooling loops for the cpu and gpu's takes more prep work. The only additional part you have to add to a music server would be a pci-e card for usb/optical/fiber. I strongly suggest not to overclock, but to down clock your music server. Lower speeds mean less heat and also better SQ.


In general, I've got the feeling that Lampizator is specialized in DAC's. Something they do obviously pretty well. I understand from a business point of view that you want to offer a one-stop-shop-solution by also offering a music server. However, by stating everything is specialized, and providing almost only stockparts it looks to me that you are not really aware of what you are doing. But that's my opinion.

A disclaimer specially for Wisnon. Yes, you told me that he upgraded the parts 2-3 months ago. That makes it clear Lampizator was " guilty" of marketing blabla with their previous version.

Anyway, I do grant everybody computer audiophile bliss, so I hope they started with better parts like they advertised with.
 

RubenV.

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I would love to hear how this computer compares to a good stand alone SD card transport. I'm not talking GUI bells and whistles I'm talking about sound quality. The SD card transport I'm using put's $10000 plus USB renderer's to shame. And it came free with my DAC.

From a parts cost standpoint, it probably added about $4 to the cost of manufacturing the DAC.

View attachment 22771

Interesting, could you elaborate a bit more of what kind of SD setup you use? I am always interested in finding new things to try out :p
At the moment I use a modded Compactflash cardreader (with precision clock etc.) as a disk for the OS. But it has a whole pc around it
and from what I understand you use something which is in essential just a cardreader without GUI and so on?

Ah, I see a picture now. With a nice FPGA Spartan (which Chord also uses for the Mojo and Hugo, allthough it might not be the exact same model).

What kind of DAC do you use?
 
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Blizzard

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Interesting, could you elaborate a bit more of what kind of SD setup you use? I am always interested in finding new things to try out :p
At the moment I use a modded Compactflash cardreader (with precision clock etc.) as a disk for the OS. But it has a whole pc around it
and from what I understand you use something which is in essential just a cardreader without GUI and so on?

Ah, I see a picture now. With a nice FPGA Spartan (which Chord also uses for the Mojo and Hugo, allthough it might not be the exact same model).



What kind of DAC do you use?


It's the Resonessence Mirus DAC. As the picture shows, the internal SD card reader sends the data about 1/4" away where it is buffered into the FPGA ram chip. The FPGA, and the RAM, is synchronously clocked to the same ultra low phase noise clock as the DAC chip (dual ESS 9018's in mono block mode). It's the purest, noise free, jitter free way to do things I know of. The only jitter in this system is the jitter of the master clock itself. You'll never beat it with an external device connected by a cable.

The GUI actually works great. Super fast and glitch free. You operate it with an Apple remote, or the front panel. They even have an HDMI video out to connect it to a TV or monitor if you don't wanna use the front OLED panel.
 

RubenV.

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It's the Resonessence Mirus DAC. As the picture shows, the internal SD card reader sends the data about 1/4" away where it is buffered into the FPGA ram chip. The FPGA, and the RAM, is synchronously clocked to the same ultra low phase noise clock as the DAC chip (dual ESS 9018's in mono block mode). It's the purest, noise free, jitter free way to do things I know of. The only jitter in this system is the jitter of the master clock itself. You'll never beat it with an external device connected by a cable.

The GUI actually works great. Super fast and glitch free. They even have an HDMI video out to connect it to a TV or monitor if you don't wanna use the front OLED panel.

With what other streamers did you compared it? I like the solution of buffering, I am just not very fond of the of-the-shelve dac chips like the Sabre. To me they sound all more of less in the same range, differences only caused by the implementation of the chip. Despite that, incorporation of an SD reader like this is something I do like.
 

Blizzard

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With what other streamers did you compared it? I like the solution of buffering, I am just not very fond of the of-the-shelve dac chips like the Sabre. To me they sound all more of less in the same range, differences only caused by the implementation of the chip. Despite that, incorporation of an SD reader like this is something I do like.


I've only compared it with a pile of computers connected via USB, but other's I know have compared it with an Aurender W20 among others. One of the Resonessence engineers told me the best he's ever heard from this DAC other than from the internal SD card was from this unit:

http://www.qlshifi.com/en/wzcapi/qa660.htm

But it does no DSD or Flac in 24/192 PCM, only WAV.

There is the new Aune S18 that looks pretty good as well.

http://en.auneaudio.com/html/en_products1/pc_hifi/189_14.html

It does do DSD up to 64 and decodes a bunch of different PCM compression formats.

Since this DAC was actually 100% designed by the engineer who designed the ESS 9018 chip, I can assure you it's very well implemented. In fact it's the only DAC out there that uses the chip the proper way the designer intended it to be used. But other than that, there's no reason any DAC manufacturer couldn't implement something similar into their units. However it did take them a pile of programming work to make it operate smooth as it does.
 

RubenV.

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I agree, it would be awesome if other DAC brands would incorporate this functionality into their dacs. That would save us some money to spend on other parts of our systems.
 

wisnon

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There is a Dutch company that makes a triangular shaped SD card reading Dac for not too much money. RBCD only.

I agree that SD card transport is very simple with extreme SQ. The user interface is limited though. It has the huge advantage of having your entire 4TB library on 8 cards of 512GB, but the cost is still high for these cards. Imagine travelling with your entire library in your shirt pocket! The SQ advantage is mainly due to the abilities of the SD card medium itself (can easily deal with hi-speed photography/video, so audio is trivial, it's quiet....plus unlike HDD and SSD, there is no constant rearranging of stored data for "optimization").

The Mirus is Sabre based and like Ruben, not my favourite and the playback engine cannot be as good as the computer stuff like BE. Yes, I know that Resonnessence does sabre like no other, but still Sabre.

Regarding transports. i am hearing that CDs rippen on the fly in servers and played back by BE will rival if not beat SD cards.. This is to be confirmed, but if true....fill in the blanks.
 

wisnon

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Ruben, I know lots of people commercial and individual, who will immediatley take 10 of your Servers of the quality you tout for the stated €3K. Are you willing to make and sell them at that price? Software included, but without support and even you can charge a bit for delivery.
 

Blizzard

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There is a Dutch company that makes a triangular shaped SD card reading Dac for not too much money. RBCD only.

I agree that SD card transport is very simple with extreme SQ. The user interface is limited though. It has the huge advantage of having your entire 4TB library on 8 cards of 512GB, but the cost is still high for these cards. Imagine travelling with your entire library in your shirt pocket! The SQ advantage is mainly due to the abilities of the SD card medium itself (can easily deal with hi-speed photography/video, so audio is trivial, it's quiet....plus unlike HDD and SSD, there is no constant rearranging of stored data for "optimization").

The Mirus is Sabre based and like Ruben, not my favourite and the playback engine cannot be as good as the computer stuff like BE. Yes, I know that Resonnessence does sabre like no other, but still Sabre.

Regarding transports. i am hearing that CDs rippen on the fly in servers and played back by BE will rival if not beat SD cards.. This is to be confirmed, but if true....fill in the blanks.

Yes the user interface might not be as slick as something like Jremote. But I'd say it's much more convenient than something like vinyl. For some reason audiophiles still listen to vinyl. And CD players. For some reason they were acceptable for audiophiles a short time ago. I really have a hard time understanding why the GUI not being great is always the first thing that comes up about these card readers, when you can fit tens of thousands of albums in the palm of your hand, and navigate to the album you want within seconds. Are we not audiophiles anymore when it comes to user interfaces that aren't mainstream?

And as far as DAC chips go, I wouldn't just judge a DAC on the chip alone. There's a lot going on in a DAC besides the chip. And chances are the only DAC's you heard using Sabre chips were cheap ones. I haven't heard any complaints on the SQ of the Merging NADAC yet. Most people who heard it say it's neck and neck with the Lampizator GG. And I would be shocked if it sounds better than the Mirus playing tracks from the SD card.
 

wisnon

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Blizz,

The fact that you can use the TV screen is good. the tiny screen on the Dac is not really navigational paradise, but i do agree that your library in your shirt pocket is very attractive. Still, you say the interface is quick, so that is a big plus. I would like to use it for myself and see if there is any significant bother. There may not be, as you say...

Still, I think the playback engines used by BE, XXXHighend and HQP will hardly be matched by simpler playback engines embedded in Dac playback software. I know you are looking for the Ultimatist approach, so it behooves you to check out the server route too.

SOFTWARE, more than hardware is where I think its at, at the moment, especially when you string up your LVDS solution. :)
 

bonzo75

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And chances are the only DAC's you heard using Sabre chips were cheap ones.

Doesn't Weiss have a Sabre chip, and is not cheap? Apart from that, Sabre or not, I have heard many dCS, compared some, Esoteric K01, Trinity, others have compared MSB, BADA Reference, PD, etc etc.


Most people who heard NADAC say it's neck and neck with the Lampizator GG. .

i don't think most people have compared the two. Only Bruce B seems to have both and says GG pulls ahead.

Anyway my point is such posts don't help unless a few people put them in the room together and listen, especially on full symphony orchestra.
 

RubenV.

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Ruben, I know lots of people commercial and individual, who will immediatley take 10 of your Servers of the quality you tout for the stated €3K. Are you willing to make and sell them at that price? Software included, but without support and even you can charge a bit for delivery.

We can certainly discuss the possibilities, please send me a pm regarding this. I can make an offer with a player or dual setup (which hardware is included), build these, install Windows Server 2012 (trial or license), run Audiophile Optimizer and also optimize the BIOS (down clock the processor and RAM) and prepare the units for shipment.
 

Blizzard

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Blizz,

The fact that you can use the TV screen is good. the tiny screen on the Dac is not really navigational paradise, but i do agree that your library in your shirt pocket is very attractive. Still, you say the interface is quick, so that is a big plus. I would like to use it for myself and see if there is any significant bother. There may not be, as you say...

Still, I think the playback engines used by BE, XXXHighend and HQP will hardly be matched by simpler playback engines embedded in Dac playback software. I know you are looking for the Ultimatist approach, so it behooves you to check out the server route too.

SOFTWARE, more than hardware is where I think its at, at the moment, especially when you string up your LVDS solution. :)

I actually don't even bother with the screen because I can find the album I want to hear within seconds navigating with the front panel and remote. You just need to sort in alphabetical order. It's far less cumbersome than using the HQP GUI on PC.
 

Blizzard

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Doesn't Weiss have a Sabre chip, and is not cheap? Apart from that, Sabre or not, I have heard many dCS, compared some, Esoteric K01, Trinity, others have compared MSB, BADA Reference, PD, etc etc.




i don't think most people have compared the two. Only Bruce B seems to have both and says GG pulls ahead.

Anyway my point is such posts don't help unless a few people put them in the room together and listen, especially on full symphony orchestra.


Bruce says the GG pulls ahead of the Horus, not the NADAC. Remember the NADAC does have a few key advantages in the SQ department over the Horus. One major one being the ability to parallel the 8 channels into 2. Anyone who has compared the Exasound E28 to the E22, knows this has a big impact. The Mirus goes even further by using dual chips with all 8 channels paralleled to 1 for the ultimate performance from the chips.
 

bonzo75

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What is your audition music?
 

asiufy

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Could somebody refer to differences in SQ between Aurender servers and Lampi Komputer pls?
Very curious.

I'm curious about it myself.
Aurender always win in ease of use, though. If that's important to you...
Generally, compared to other solutions, I've found the Aurenders to have the cleanest, smoothest sound of all, maybe because of all the linear, filtered supplies they employ.
I've heard streamers that do more detail, sharper transients, etc. But overall, the Aurenders always win in naturalness.
 

wisnon

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Asiufy, same Lampi overspecified linear power is applied to the Server, with each subsection being independently powered and option for going full 12v battery power with the flip of a switch. Additionally in Windows you can dive into CORE mode while still retaining wifi hotspot and JRemote type of control.

I agree that the Aurenders/Antipodes are easier to use, but they lack the flexibility of using any 3rd party playback engine like BE or to upsample on the fly to high rate pcm/dsd like HQP and JRiver/Foobar.

Depending on needs, either the dedicated streamer or the Computer server approach can provide ideal solutions with really no significant SQ compromise.
 

Blizzard

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