I am one of those lucky ones. I have had four Lampizators in my system: Amber, Level 4, Big 7, and now Atlantic. All four have the Lampizator signature sound - crystal clear, organic, musically-involving. My Big 7 with the volume control served as my DAC/line preamp for a good 1.5 years. It was a versatile component that could take on different personalities with different rectifier and signal tubes. My favorite were the TunbgSol 5AS4a rectifier and Sylvania 2A3 signal tubes. But as I had input switching, USB/SPDIF, PCM/DSD, AND polarity switching all in the same unit, the remote switching was a little complicated and caused confusion to my family members. So I sold it and immediately missed the Lampi sound. When I read about Lukasz' new Atlantic DAC and his enthusiam about it I had to try it. Lukasz, besides being a brilliant designer, has one of the best ears in the business. A good engineer cannot make good-sounding equipment unless he has good ear. I know and trust Lukasz' ear. So I took a chance on the Atlantic sight unseen.
Having had the Atlantic in my system for two weeks now I can happily report that it is a winner. Since it doesn't have a volume control option or extra line in, I am using it with the Luminous Audio Axiom III passive preamp, a great component in its own right which also is much simnpler to operate.
As compared to the Big 7, I would say that the Atlantic/Axiom combo retains all the positive characters of the Big 7 but also has a crystalline quality not found in the former. The difference is similar to the OTL sound as compared to good tube equipment. I have had good tube designs in my system - Cary, Counterpoint, C-J. But when I first heard OTL equipment, notably Transcendent Sound and Atma-Sphere, I knew I much preferred the OTL sound. But I couldn't deal with the amount of heat generated by OTL equipment, especially in the summer. In addition, all the fussiness of tubes biasing and noise are negatives.
Now I have the OTL sound without the fuss. The combination of the Atlantic DAC, Axiom passive preamp, Wells Audio Innamorata solid state amplifier (another great piece), all plugged into the new Wells Audio Looking Glass power conditioner and wired with DanaCables, is in a word, magical! It has the harmonically-rich sound of tubes, crystalline quality of OTL, tight bass performance of solid state, and the musically-involving, pinpointed soundstage imaging that resembles the real performance. I go to live and mostly acoustical performances at least once a month (just came back from the Montreal Jazz festival) and this comes close to the real thing.
Vinh Vu
Gingko Audio and DanaCable