Baltic 4 owner here in Canada, I had a warranty issue as well, which was resolved eventually but it was not straightforward. I suspect Horizon and Baltic owners DO get different treatment, but then again there is only one distributor in NA and Lukasz has maybe 10-15 employees so small scale "cottage industry" size without huge cash flow or cheap credit, and thus he is beholden to the ’white glove’ folks for purchasing his higher margin DACs. Frankly it’s amazing what he’s done with such limited resources - the Baltic is hands down the best DAC sonically speaking I have owned so far. I own a small business with 25 employees and I am under pressure every day deciding where and when to allocate resources.
Shocking Lampizator Service
I bought a Lampizator Horizon several months ago and have been delighted with it. A few weeks ago there was a pop and the left channel lowered in output so my imaging was off center. I tried different diagnostic combos until I realized it had to be the Horizon DAC/PREAMP. I emailed Lukasz and he said yes they needed to look at the DAC, and that they would take care of everything. A few days later I was emailed a prepaid label to ship it back to Poland. Rob, the US Distributor also weighed in via email to make sure everything was being handled. I dropped the flight case off on may 30th (they offer home pick up as well). I got two email updates one explaining that the problem was mechanical as it must have been dropped by the shipper on the initial shipment to me. That's an impressive drop given the Horizon is shipped in a flight case with at least 6 inches of foam around it. The thing is that I got it back to my house yesterday June 9th. That's 11 days round trip to Poland for a repair! My dCS Vivaldi Upsampler had a known issue that I addressed 2 years ago. It took over three weeks round trip to their Boston repair facility. I am not bagging on dCS as their turn around time is normal. It's the Lampizator service that I find SHOCKINGLY great. Frankly, I was concerned when I made the investment in the Horizon about service should I need it being based in Poland. Lukasz has built a business model that is truly global. I can highly recommend the Horizon as an outstanding DAC and pre-amp (the volume control reminds me of the ARC REF 10 if you know that unit, it is great!), and the service is second to none I have encountered this far in my audio journey.