Many audiophile manufacturers have statement product of uncompromising build, performance and cost. Some arise by special requests from wealthy clients who finance a no-holds-barred commission. Mentioning LampizatOr owner input was crucial. These folks often personalize their gear as something Łukasz has always welcomed. The client is king after all. Because of it, customizators often picked boutique parts: exotic Teflon tube sockets, the highest DSD engine available, the very best capacitors money can buy. After a while, Herr LampizatOr recognized a certain pattern in these orders and decided to meet the obvious demand in a more official fashion. Enter the Golden Gate. In short, this is a Big 7 with the most luxurious parts. As a bonus, the chassis is made from grained then lacquered copper. Out of pure formality it needs to be said that nearly half of all current LampizatOr orders today are Golden Gate machines. Perhaps that’s no big surprise in this hobby. If an audio enthusiast is willing to pay €10’000 for a DAC, he'll gladly add €4’000 to get the very best and most luxurious model a given designer can do. Prestige and expense are joined at the hip after all.

The Golden Gate moniker reflects the deep impression the famous bridge between San Francisco and Marin County made on our man when he first drove across it nearly three decades ago. Now it's 2015 and his flagship product could only be called Golden Gate. This is the coronation of years’ worth of work, first purely as a hobbyist sharing his DIY exploits by way of R2R Philips DACs, now as the owner of a resilient non-mainstream boutique firm. His latest clearly differs from LampizatOr products which came before. Once under a new owner’s roof, the Golden Gate will impress with its unique charm, prestigious looks and ability to draw everyone’s attention. The basic Golden Gate gets €13'000. The fully balanced version nets another €4'000, a TAIV VC-03 volume control module and display plus remote control add another €1'000. Whatever option a client picks, their Golden Gate will be delivered to the door in an extremely durable flight case lined with foam. It's made solely for LampizatOr’s flagship and is so big and heavy that I see no scenario in which one person alone could handle it regardless of fitness. Three roller-block isolation footers are included along with a pair of Psvane WE101D-L replicas of the obscenely expensive Western Electric originals, which were made in the early last century (or a quad set for the balanced version). The standard rectifier tube is the Emission Labs 274B mesh. Yet there is some room to roll. KR Audio equivalents or EML 5U4G are possible, too. Non-standard, there also is the world of NOS tubes to be discovered. The coin required to obtain some highly regarded specimens simply makes yours truly shiver so let's leave it at that. Local birds tweet about the WE101D-L and EML mesh rectifier as being one of the best combinations culled from current production. I can confirm that these are great performers indeed.

As a maxed-out Big 7, the Golden Gate is truly huge; the biggest and heaviest DAC I've had the pleasure/pain to deal with. It only weighs 16kg but measures a stout 45 x 53 x 13cm (WxDxH). It’s quite flat but sprawling, very similar to a Big 7 when viewed from the front. Its face plate is available in silver and black. Here not a single change was made. This element is quite massive, of aluminium and heavily brushed. It's noticeably bigger than the rest of the chassis to protrude on all sides. It has four screws and the company logo whose O serves as an on/off button. This has a back-lit ring in one of four colours. The buyer picks the one she fancies. If one opts for the volume control, there will be a knob operating in the digital domain with a monochrome display as an additional feature. That too is available in one of four colors. The obvious choice would be to match it to the power LED.

The Golden Gate's back is made out of a steel plate bent such as to continue as the belly. On the rear there's an IEC socket with two switches for on/off and voltage selection. A bit further there's an information decal about the internal DSD and PCM modules, stock tubes, topology (SE or balanced) and serial number. There's also the code of the person responsible for assembly and one for the final QC auditioner. It came as no surprise that the latter showed the initials ŁF. Our man likes to be involved. A bit further to the right there is a coaxial S/PDIF based on a top Furutech socket, an AES/EBU from Neutrik and a generic USB type B coupled to the Amanero Combo384 transceiver. Two switches regulate the digital inputs. WBT Nextgen RCA and Neutrik XLR handle analogue outputs. The SE versions sports an additional switch to regulate tube voltages and allow 101D, 45 and 2A3. The balanced version runs 101D exclusively.

Because of its enormous depth, the bottom gets six tall rubber footer for support. Depending on furniture depth, the back may stick out but the deck will remain stable. This is a big boon to smaller audio furniture. In addition to the rubber feet, there are three reasonably placed inverted ball-bearing races. The Big 7 doesn't have those. Different too is the coppery cover bent in four places to slip onto the base. The finish lacquer guarantees against discolouration over the decades like blackening, greening or other unpleasant surprises. The deep grain adds visual appeal. The unique look is completed with a honeycomb strip running along the entire depth; and vent perforations around the tube socketry. I can assure you that once in place, the Golden Gate looks spectacular.

Again we can’t identify the silicon yet its 32/384 capability clearly makes it a modern Sigma-Delta chip. Above the PCM engine sits a proprietary DSD 256 module in dual-mono config. This connects directly to the DHT grid. The DSD 256 module comes standard only with the Golden Gate. The Big 7 and Lite 7 get DSD 128 and DSD 64 respectively. Again, DSD filtering is purely passive yet assisted by an Arduino microcomputer and a mysterious chip which acts as control logic in the analogue domain. The Arduino executes a short software code written by the LampizatOr crew. It does two things: it tells the logic module what task to perform; and what it actually is. That’s because our mystery chip was built for very different apps but Łukasz appropriated it for its particular math skills.