This will be a long one, so fair warning
Thank you Steve for the incredible opportunity to attened such an extrodinary and wonderfully executed event.
None of the invisible work/time and effort of organizing it is lost on me. From helpfully and diligently responding to RSVPs and questions to the food prep, refreshments and patience of all hosts involved. You made it look effortless.
All of you Fred, Łukasz, Russ, Cathy and of course you Steve were incredibly friendly, open and welcoming. It's been such an honor to meet, dine and converse with all of you as well as listen to stories and conversations of what I consider very interesting, driven and truly passionate people -who have insurmountable amount of knowledge and experience in the subject of state-of-the-art audio reproduction.
(Sorry for not crediting people I met on Saturday, I was tired and don't want to forget to mention anyone)
It's no coincidence Lampizator DAC's sound expectional as is evident by all the interest around them. They're made with such attention to detail and with the pursuit of pushing the boundries of what is possible in the playback of digital files.
The people at Lampizator really love what they do and it shows, the sound speaks for itself IMO.
If anyone's interested in a high end DAC, this would be my pick. You can discard my opinion and not take it seriously, after all who am I to have any authority on what's good, let alone a good pick for you.
As for the Aphrodite itself;
I will say that having heard many high end DACs, none have impressed me as much with meeting my criteria of -a full, authoritative sound with a delicacy and finesse, transparency, speed and (I hestitate to say most importantly as these things are very important to me) texture and sense of space.
Steve's room with its acoustics treatments , Lamm amps and great synergy of cables and anti-vibration- combined with the Zellaton speakers with their incredibly fast, super light cones and truly exceptional crossovers and cabinet acoustics really let the Aphrodite shine and show the whole world of micro-dynamics that live on a recording. The incredibly powerful, fast, controlled and textured bass, to me was nothing short of extraordinary.
The sound to me was emotionally engaging and surprisingly non-fatiguing despite high SPLs which are not my cup of tea and not something I'm used to.
The fact I didn't want to stop listening even at much higher levels than I'd normally do speaks volumes to me, as that only happened a handful of times. And never with playing digital.
Concluding, I'm not going to claim any bests as it's impossible to know everything and I don't want to speak ill of any other manufacturers -after all they're all people sharing my interests and they all bring their ideas and passion.
But having closely watched the Lampizator company and Łukasz's efforts for the last three years I'm extremely impressed with the quality of their products.
They checks all my boxes and I'd be surprised if you were disappointed with this DAC.
I'd check the source playing before blaming the DAC.
Contratulations on making a product like that a finished, producable reality -that's no small feat. Kudos Łukasz and team.
Cheers
Andrew