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.
Just to put another twist on this, the problem I was having with channel imbalance came back intermitantly, so I started trying to figure it out with Lukasz again. I am embarased to report that the problem I had is/was due to a quad of tubes that had a bad tube in the mix. This Quad was a NOS set from the 70s, not the factory supplied tubes. I have no tube tester so I was swapping tube sets out and discovered the bad tube by accident. This makes sense as Lampi reported they could not duplicate my issue on the bench, but did repair some shipping damage I caused by shipping it back. I am now once again in love with my Horizon and my system overall. The invitation to roll all kinds of compatable tubes in the Horizon is a wonderful thing, but you need to know a wee bit about tubes before you start to roll tubes in it! When my Audio friend in Seattle learned I was getting a DAC/PRE with 7 tubes of three different types and I asked him for a tube education, he didn't know where to start. I'm learning and it's fun! |
@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! |
