I wasn't at the club meeting, but I'm using the Manhattan as my reference at the moment and I listened to Bruce's Lampizator for a while at RMAF. The headphone setup Bruce had at RMAF was one of the best digital setups I've heard. I didn't expect good results with the Manhattan at the Club, because our system has exactly the wrong synergy for the Manhattan. The Lampi and its tubes have tremendous lushness that's perfect for the club system. The Club system is somewhat unforgiving; I've heard it sound great at times and at other times, with equipment having the wrong synergy or a bad recording, it can send you running for the exit. The Manhattan with its current firmware version is equally unforgiving of bad synergy. I'm guessing those who attended the meeting would describe the sound as Fatiguing.
The Manhattan firmware currently does 32/384 PCM upsampling. The resolution is so amazing I can hear all kinds of things I've never heard on my Redbook collection, but it does sound a bit lacking in color, which I would want to correct in other parts of a system. An upcoming Mytek firmware update in May will do Quad DSD upsampling. I don't care about hi-rez or native-DSD files myself, because I'm not going to go out and spend money on it. However, upsampling of my Redbook collection has been a revelation for me and I strongly prefer DSD upsampling, for its organic spaciousness and lack of PCM harshness (note that the Club demo files were native DSD). With the new firmware the Manhattan will have more tweakability than any digital converter I've used.
A user may well find they prefer the Lampizator overall, but I expect the problem with the club shootout was equipment synergy. If you can't get great sound with a unit of the caliber of the Manhattan there's a problem somewhere.
The Manhattan firmware currently does 32/384 PCM upsampling. The resolution is so amazing I can hear all kinds of things I've never heard on my Redbook collection, but it does sound a bit lacking in color, which I would want to correct in other parts of a system. An upcoming Mytek firmware update in May will do Quad DSD upsampling. I don't care about hi-rez or native-DSD files myself, because I'm not going to go out and spend money on it. However, upsampling of my Redbook collection has been a revelation for me and I strongly prefer DSD upsampling, for its organic spaciousness and lack of PCM harshness (note that the Club demo files were native DSD). With the new firmware the Manhattan will have more tweakability than any digital converter I've used.
A user may well find they prefer the Lampizator overall, but I expect the problem with the club shootout was equipment synergy. If you can't get great sound with a unit of the caliber of the Manhattan there's a problem somewhere.