Lukasz Has Done It Again

[Steve Williams]

Found this interesting from Aphrodite manual:
View attachment 158019
- Can an example of “I2S with 3xBNC” be shared?
- Also not sure I understand #2 and how the olympus itself fits in. LAN out of taiko switch to where?
- Interesting XDMI connection bottom of the preference list. Sounded like there was near universal preference for XDMI with the Horizon 360 over, for example, usb

Gosh I hope Lukasz wont be disappointed as I am still loving XDMI which BTW Lukasz developed that input for us zealots who wanted native XDMI from Olympus. I havent compared it to others except USB with a 1.2 meter Masterbuilt Ultra cable and to these old ears XDMI for me was the hands down preference. There is still room for guests who want to hear Aphrodite at my house Oct 31-Nov2 Please reach out via PM here if interested. As I stated previously members are traveling from all over the USA to attend and 2 members are coming from afar (China and Poland ) to hear the new DAC. These have always been fun weekends and to get feedback from Lukasz and Fred about questions, comments or thoughts is always a plus.

 

[LampiNA]

Gosh I hope Lukasz wont be disappointed as I am still loving XDMI which BTW Lukasz developed that input for us zealots who wanted native XDMI from Olympus. I havent compared it to others except USB with a 1.2 meter Masterbuilt Ultra cable and to these old ears XDMI for me was the hands down preference. There is still room for guests who want to hear Aphrodite at my house Oct 31-Nov2 Please reach out via PM here if interested. As I stated previously members are traveling from all over the USA to attend and 2 members are coming from afar (China and Poland ) to hear the new DAC. These have always been fun weekends and to get feedback from Lukasz and Fred about questions, comments or thoughts is always a plus.

Of course not, Steve! XDMI sounds incredible and Lukasz loves it in absolute terms. He just feels his other solution is like a shot of adrenaline which can benefit some music. I'd equate it to how DSD can be a little more laid back than PCM (some call it "bite"). Nothing negative at all towards XDMI--hell I use it in my personal setup with my own H360--just a personal observation.

 

[Alrainbow]

I can say this squeeze box is an amazing sound , extremely fast in changing tracks and yields of level of details few get close to.
For those who don't know, lampi kinda made this for us a long time ago always use this method as a source at times
While I use others squeeze on roon end point rules .
What I don't understand is why some posters are acting as they are ?
some here have done the same to another high end digital product.
Take a step back and try to enjoy this opportunity.
I hope to hear this new product when it comes to shows
Maybe capital lol

 

[Kingrex]

Hi Ron,

We have dealt before so i had hoped you know me better than that

I apologise if any of my questions have antagonised. I dont presume to know much but strive to learn hence in every part of my post i always wrie in that please correct me if i am wrong. It will be good to discuss an an open forum rather than having it shut down .

Of course i can go into more details but it is not my intention to harm but to explore and to understand. To give an idea ; Lukasz started out with modification of circuits and dacs posting on a blog that a lot of ppl followed his thoughts and admired his work . I too admire his work and this is pretty similar to following in his footsteps - the highest praise possible in a way.

Sound is sound and thats subjective - how many times have we heard a system that someone remarks is the best they have ever heard but we walk away politely nodding and acknowledging . The hobby is turning into one of superlative vocabularies and descriptives rather than one that we can appreciate share and explore. I think there is a lot wrong with our hobby and perhaps looking at the bigger picture is exploratory.

I too am as an audiophile as vested in lampizator, its dac and the new one as probably anyone else and am keen to see it succeed. As from my earliest post here - cost no object is probably bandied around too much ; since individual hifi components are getting astronomical in price ; the question too is - are the discrete components used in a cost no object the best that we can have .....i really prefer not to modify anything here. Or are we saying that we can get a better sound from cheaper components ? I dont think i can agree with that. I can substantiate but dont really want to out of respect; respect that i hope is still in the conversation here.

I have a horizon dac and i love that dac and i love what lukasz does - so yes i have skin in the game. Unlike most i probably do not accept some manufacturer specs as being the possible best of what a product can do - esp for digital products because i know that we can get so much more. The genius of the Lukszis in the circuit design and that i can never hold a candle to but everyone have their own resources and it means different materials and components can be substituted to get an even higher performance level . I can even go as far as to say that in the horizon dac - the replacement of just 1 component makes a huge difference to the sound; just one.

The risk is all mine of course ; modifying something means that the warranty is gone , the support is gone but yet perhaps that is the only way to learn - being a good gardener kills a few plants but being a good doctor also means that whatever you do you keep the patient alive .

The points i have raised are not unreasonable - it is ok to ask questions when a manufacturer is asking 88k euro for a dac - as consumers we ask many more questions for much smaller purchases. The hobby has become such that we dont ask any questions anymore; the pioneering spirit of Luksz modifying cec cd player - is that spirit all gone and disappeared? I think it has. Economics has changed the heart of what made this so great to start with.

I attach photos of what i have done to my horizon to extract the best sound - lets see if anyone else has done this and i hope that answers your question as to 'Why' Ron. Its not for the faint hearted and i have learnt so much from this process. I am not a master at this and will only be a student but let not forget even a master started as a student.

My path here is not very different to how Lukasz started questioning cd players and their circuits and on how to improve them. I respect Lampizator and I respect Lukasz. I remembered meeting Luksz at Munich and asking him face to face (without anyone else inthe room) what he thought of external clocking solutions for the horizon and the answer was more of the unwillingness to help me as a customer understand and explore here. Why are we to take dogma as dogma?

Perhaps that being the case ; we shouldnt any further sidetrack the thread any further on the launch of the aphrodite. Lets just have this lay as it is and focus on the event to come.

Maybe it would be more appropriate to start your own thread on how to modify a DAC to extract more goodness from it. People interested can join that thread.
Heck, I might pop the top on my DAC and ask what is in the signal and could be improved upon.

 

[Lukasz "Lampizator" Fikus]

Thanks LF for clarifying -- would a user then still need a separate streamer? Or can one just plug the Aphrodite directly to an internet signal and use an app for integrated streaming, Qobuz, Roon endpoint, etc?

The DAC absolutely needs the best server streamer you can get - we just provide LAN endpoint bridge architecture. We have no GUI and no internet connectivity. We just wanted people to have choice in every scenario, but I am totally happy with USB and be done with it. From THE SAME server the LAN sound marginally fuller than USB. Olympus is just another story - AMAZING sound !

 

[Lukasz "Lampizator" Fikus]

On the lettering again: I am glad you pointed out that the "Greek fantasy" about the logotype was not the best. While I am one hundred percent confident about our electronic choices and decisions, I am not a graphic artist and I just had to use a quick print for first photo because I knew YOU gentlemen are waiting for the first peek shots. So I printed the first chassis with the first greek font I found.
On a second thought - we are not Greek, I am not Greek, the product is not Greek and I dont want to make it Greek. I want the goddess to be our "patron" so we will step back and de-greek the DAC and not use any funny cheap fonts. Afrer all, Greek alphabet is not Latin, it is different, and attempts to make Latin look Greek are not very wise. This is what happens when you make the engineers do the aesthetics.

 

[Agent86]

We use our own - a mix of GulfStream (current model) and GulfStream2 - the super server to be announced in January. It has a LAN RJ45 link, HDMI, i2S, 3xBNC, USB and SPDIF

Lukasz, you mentioned a new GulfStream coming in January. Any other product releases we should be looking for? Baltic 5???

 

[Chrisl]

The DAC absolutely needs the best server streamer you can get - we just provide LAN endpoint bridge architecture. We have no GUI and no internet connectivity. We just wanted people to have choice in every scenario, but I am totally happy with USB and be done with it. From THE SAME server the LAN sound marginally fuller than USB. Olympus is just another story - AMAZING sound !

Well you should not be "totally happy" with USB imo. I feel you should at this level of dac developments to be constantly looking at all audio interfaces to see what's best, like I2S

 

[Lukasz "Lampizator" Fikus]

Lukasz, you mentioned a new GulfStream coming in January. Any other product releases we should be looking for? Baltic 5???

We are a brain institute working 24/7 to improve things, and we introduce them in due time. Every product sees an accumulation of improvements that call for a name update once in a while. Concerning GulfStream - we are unifying it visually and esthetically with the rest of the lineup and in a meantime we introduce the improvements wherever possible. In this case we can't improve the sound but we will add two more output types and bigger cooling system as well.

 

[Lukasz "Lampizator" Fikus]

Well you should not be "totally happy" with USB imo. I feel you should at this level of dac developments to be constantly looking at all audio interfaces to see what's best, like I2S

Did you notice by any chance 6 digital input types on the Horizon and 8 on Aphrodite?

 

[simonthepieman]

All very exciting and now Ordered! From Greg one of the first in the UK I expect.
Anticipation will kill me, just tried psvane summit series new top of the range 6SN7 's on horizon 360
Really amazing
Looking forward to not tube rolling NO changes for aphrodite

 

[heihei]

Congrats Simon - would love to hear it at some point!

Interesting re: footers - based on Munich conversations, I felt sure the Aphrodite would come with higher-spec footers. Based on my experience with the H360, using Hifistay underneath it gives a big uptick in performance so I'm surprised this hasn't been implemented.

 

[simonthepieman]

Congrats Simon - would love to hear it at some point!

Interesting re: footers - based on Munich conversations, I felt sure the Aphrodite would come with higher-spec footers. Based on my experience with the H360, using Hifistay underneath it gives a big uptick in performance so I'm surprised this hasn't been implemented.

The magaudio ones do look interesting. I'm in Yorkshire if you wish to hear it sometime

 

[simonthepieman]

Congrats Simon - would love to hear it at some point!

Interesting re: footers - based on Munich conversations, I felt sure the Aphrodite would come with higher-spec footers. Based on my experience with the H360, using Hifistay underneath it gives a big uptick in performance so I'm surprised this hasn't been implemented.

Do you have a link for hifistay?

 

[dminches]

HIFISTAY

 

[Rich J]

Do you have a link for hifistay?

https://www.lotushifi.co.uk/hifistay/

 

[Argonaut]

On the lettering again: I am glad you pointed out that the "Greek fantasy" about the logotype was not the best. While I am one hundred percent confident about our electronic choices and decisions, I am not a graphic artist and I just had to use a quick print for first photo because I knew YOU gentlemen are waiting for the first peek shots. So I printed the first chassis with the first greek font I found.
On a second thought - we are not Greek, I am not Greek, the product is not Greek and I dont want to make it Greek. I want the goddess to be our "patron" so we will step back and de-greek the DAC and not use any funny cheap fonts. Afrer all, Greek alphabet is not Latin, it is different, and attempts to make Latin look Greek are not very wise. This is what happens when you make the engineers do the aesthetics.

So …Why did you ? In order perhaps to irritate a well known Cypriot Greek competitor manufacturer of DAC’s who quite obviously name their products after characters from Greek mythology ?

 

[Steve Williams]

Congrats Simon - would love to hear it at some point!

Interesting re: footers - based on Munich conversations, I felt sure the Aphrodite would come with higher-spec footers. Based on my experience with the H360, using Hifistay underneath it gives a big uptick in performance so I'm surprised this hasn't been implemented.

Everyone has their own anecdotal stories with good results. There is no wrong answer. Personally I use under all of my components ,Critical Mass Systems center Stage and when the H360 came out I switched from Ultra TT to the latest Center stage Footers for under speakers the LS 2.25 with amazing results. These will also be used under my Aphrodite

 

[simonthepieman]

Congrats Simon - would love to hear it at some point!

Interesting re: footers - based on Munich conversations, I felt sure the Aphrodite would come with higher-spec footers. Based on my experience with the H360, using Hifistay underneath it gives a big uptick in performance so I'm surprised this hasn't been implemented.

Morning (in UK) Heihei which particular footers from the range do you use under the Horizon or do you have the rack system

 

[Golum]

Morning (in UK) Heihei which particular footers from the range do you use under the Horizon or do you have the rack system

I can vouch the same sentiment as HeiHei for the effects of these footers. I'm using Absolute Point under H360.