Lampizator DSD512 Upgrade?

[k6davis]

I have a loaded (balanced, pre, Duelund caps) Lampi Gen 4 DSD256 DAC. Sounds fantastic, of course. Keep your Atlantic, Golden & Pacific DAC's away from my ears.  My wallet isn't ready for them yet.

 

I'm trying to decide if it's worth upgrading my DAC to DSD512. Owners of the T+A DAC 8 are over the moon about DSD512. They say that the difference with that DAC is night and day, but I believe that's because at DSD512, most of the internal DSP of T+A DAC is bypassed. From my understanding, Lampi's chipless DSD is inherently "pure" which would suggest that the improvement would be less stark.

 

I've even read that the necessary clocks for DSD512 have higher jitter which could adversely impact SQ. I have no idea if that is true, or if it applies to the unique Lampi DSD implementation.

 

Any thoughts, or has anyone experienced upgrading to DSD512 on their Lampizator? 

 

Thanks,
Keith

[bodiebill]

No experience (I have a Lampi Lite 7 with DSD256). However, for what it is worth, I remember Lukasz Fikus saying that there is no need to go higher than DSD256. Or maybe that is me trying to "keep it away from my ears" :-)

 

And practical: as I do offline conversion in order not to stress the audio pc, converting to DSD256 already takes ages, so I guess DSD512 even much longer. On the other hand you could of course use HQPlayer or foo_dsd_asio.

[Miska]

13 hours ago, k6davis said:

'm trying to decide if it's worth upgrading my DAC to DSD512. Owners of the T+A DAC 8 are over the moon about DSD512. They say that the difference with that DAC is night and day, but I believe that's because at DSD512, most of the internal DSP of T+A DAC is bypassed. From my understanding, Lampi's chipless DSD is inherently "pure" which would suggest that the improvement would be less stark.

 

T+A DAC8 DSD has a discrete native DSD stage, there's no DSP involved regardless of frequency... So it is "pure" at all rates.

 

I don't have any recommendations regarding Lampi, since I have never heard it myself.

 

Higher the DSD rate is, more there is resolution and further up the high frequency noise is pushed and thus more easily removed by the analog stages.

 

[k6davis]

Thanks for the responses. 

 

I use HQPlayer to upsample in real time and I use HQPlayer NAA to isolate the server doing the DSP from the DAC. The sound is superb.

 

10 hours ago, Miska said:

T+A DAC8 DSD has a discrete native DSD stage, there's no DSP involved regardless of frequency... So it is "pure" at all rates.

 

I'm aware that the T+A DAC8 DSD has a discrete DSD stage, but my understanding was that it operates at a native rate of DSD512, and therefore feeding it a DSD512 signal bypassed.. something... inside the DAC and led to far superior performance than you would otherwise get from that DAC. 

 

People (in this forum) went as far as to say that, while it's an excellent product overall, if you're not feeding it DSD512, you're "wasting" it.

 

Anyway, I'm going to upgrade my DAC. Thanks again.

[Miska]

8 hours ago, k6davis said:

I'm aware that the T+A DAC8 DSD has a discrete DSD stage, but my understanding was that it operates at a native rate of DSD512, and therefore feeding it a DSD512 signal bypassed.. something... inside the DAC and led to far superior performance than you would otherwise get from that DAC. 

 

It doesn't need a clock divider at DSD512, that's the difference (sample rate is equal to the oscillator clock frequency). And benefit compared to most DACs that use a traditional DAC chip...

 

[Solstice380]

10 hours ago, k6davis said:

Anyway, I'm going to upgrade my DAC. Thanks again.

 

I have a Golden Atlantic that has only the chipless DSD512 module.  Couldn't be happier with the sound.  Be sure to get both the 44K and the 48K superclocks while you are doing it.  You might also inquire about the Linux for DSD512 Amanero firmware if you have an idea to use a non-Windows NAA (Linux based) like a Sonore Rendu or other.  The Windows drivers work fine (even though it reports unavailable rates to the HQP NAA daemon).  I think better boxes are available as a NAA based on Linux, unless you have AO and/or Fidelizer to calm the Windows box down and add some outboard power supplies for the CPU and etc.

 

Let us know what you do and how it turns out!