While their DACs sound fantastic, if you scan various forums I think you will notice that there is a very high rate of issues and warranty service with Lampizator. I have had three Lampi DAC’s pass through my hands and they all had issues requiring service - one prior to purchase, one while owning, and one after resell. And note the three additional examples above in this short thread alone. Build quality/QA is not there yet imho. Same goes for NA distributor - very responsive at times but they obviously mis-packed one of my DAC’s such that it got beat up during shipping. That said, the DACs sound great in the right setup (output noise can be high so proper preamp matching is critical). I am sure the Horizon sounds amazing.
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.
Showing 2 responses by nquery
@bubinga that is undoubtedly generally true. but that doesn't mean you can't extract/discern general quality/build issues from the all of the noise posted. I still believe that Lampizator DAC's are not robustly manufactured/built and easily prone to damage during shipping or other use. Witness @wokeuptobose 's side comment which wasn't even part of his main post. Funny thing is that I am actually thinking of accepting perceived risk and repurchasing a Lampi DAC because I miss some of the tube/house sound! |