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Finally got my Lampizated Kinergetics KCD-55 Ultra DAC working

Posted by morricab (S) on May 6, 2015 at 04:30:11

When the analog output stage of my Kinergetics KCD-55 Ultra went out I decided to get a Lampizator tube output stage to attach to it.

I got the board and found a suitable place in the DAC circuit where to wire it into so that the output is not too high (the DAC chips put out 5V with a 0db signal).

And...no sound. Troubleshooting revealed that the power transformer that they sent me was not working with the 180V AC. So, I had them send me another transformer. Now it all worked and I got sound out but one channel sounded distorted, mainly with high frequency sounds.

Hmmm...I wasn't sure if it was related to the DAC or the new tube stage but I had a hunch that it was related to how I done the grounding of the output signal from the DAC. I had a separate ground point for each channel. So, I unsoldered the ground from the distorted channel and soldered it to the ground of the other channel to give the same ground point.

I reconnected everything and Violà, no more distortion.

The first impression is that the soundstage and sense of depth are HUGE! Those Ultra Analog 20Bit DAC modules really reproduce the low level spatial information in a natural manner. Tonality at first was slightly dark but after warming up for about 30 minutes this cleared up and the sound is well balanced and natural.

I will let it burn in more (the output stage is brand new and needs some run in time and the DAC is supposed to stay on 24/7) and I expect even more gains but already I can say for redbook cd it probably doesn't get a whole lot better than this. The texture to the sound was really grainless but with a naturalness that I haven't found in Sigma/Delta dacs (my former Audio Aero Prima DAC was ultra smooth but still sounded somewhat synthetic to my ears ultimately compared to my ladder DACs).

If you have an old DAC laying around using some BB, PHilips or AD ladder DAC chips you can almost certainly make it near SOTA for redbook cd by Lampizating it.

Of course, I wanted to have some of the best 20bit DAC modules ever made to try this experiment out and it seems like it will pay off handsomely.

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