Another nearby PCB serves the digital boards with power regulation. Łukasz avoids regulation wherever he can, being convinced that it degrades the sound. Yet for digital it was mandatory. A bit to the right we see two chokes by Leszek Ogonowski, our domestic guru for such parts. His LO D30-1 chokes are made especially for LampizatOr. The big toroidal transformer is easily recognizable as being from the Toroidy.pl company made according to Łukasz’s specification. It delivers 160W of power and has seven secondaries. Most the internal space is taken up by the large analog board and power supply. In LampizatOr’s flagship, CMC Teflon tube sockets with gold pins are standard. Solder is from WBT and the internal wiring is based on 26-gauge stranded silver in Teflon dielectric. Atom Vishay capacitors show up in the first power stage right after the tubes. Mundorf M-Lytic HV or Kendeil equivalents sit in the second PSU stage and in the third, right before the anodes, we find Mundorf Foil MKP or Clarity Cap iPX. Metal-film laser-cut MLT resistors load the anode. Output capacitors are Jupiter Copper or Audyn's True Copper series equivalents at 1µF capacitance. Those are bypassed with Duelund Pure Silver or Mundorf silver-in-oil Supreme. Łukasz has grown very fond of silver/copper combos, hence such a combination also shows up in the Golden Gate. The optional volume control is a 64-step resistor ladder with discrete power supply.

Before getting to the juicy audition bits, one thing needs to be clarified. My Golden Gate loaner was the balanced version sans volume control. To maintain level test conditions, my Level 7’s volume was set to max and not touched afterwards. Therefore Hegel’s H160 preamplifier or Trilogy’s 908 had to handle volume. Because I had no quad of WE101D-L on hand, just a pair, Łukasz Fikus advised that I place the Western Electric replicas in the rear sockets. The original white base 101 I had at that time went in front. This allowed me to check performance in single-ended fashion since neither the H160 nor Trilogy 992 + 908 are balanced products. 

Another item requiring a blunt statement is this: the PCM modules in all LampizatOr products are mere convenience items. In every regard, the DSD engine is far superior and the entire raison d’être of these machines. It’s what made LampizatOr famous. True, handling DSD playback might be a tad problematic for people who come straight off CD or aren’t too familiar with computers, drivers and assorted shenanigans yet. But practice shows that even without a huge DSD library, one is far better off with upsampling PCM to DSD. So pick the lesser evil to make the superior DSD engine operational and bypass the PCM module. This can be achieved in many ways. On-the-fly conversion in Foobar2000, JRiver or HQ Player are the most known modes,

There of course will be folks who want to use the Golden Gate or any other Łukasz Fikus DAC with a legacy CD player. Others might want to include them in a main stereo plus home cinema rig .That's perfectly fine. In such scenarios, the PCM function is a useful thing to have. But let me state it once more to leave absolutely no doubt: such PCM-based configurations can’t show off what LampizatOr products are truly capable of. This difference is far too large to not get with at least Foobar2000 and a basic laptop. The web provides many tutorials and the entire configuration takes but a few minutes. It's definitely worth the effort! It also should come as no surprise that the Golden Gate—or any other LampizatOr DAC—can be had with just the DSD engine. For 99% of the buyers who going in knew perfectly well what a Golden Gate, Big 7 or Lite 7 actually is, not being able to play pure PCM is no issue. Fikus DACs are built for one and only one purpose: the best music quality. That's why my listening impressions were heavily based on DSD and only a fraction of the review was devoted to PCM. Approaching the Golden Gate in any other fashion would be criminal. Additionally, this DAC needs to run for some time to achieve its full potential.

The COS Engineering D1 was its first opponent. Not too long ago, I compared it to my Level 7 for another Polish publication. Back then I wrote that the Taiwanese was the more polite and calm, less airy but of comparable precision. Additional differences could be heard in dynamics. The Level 7 was more vigorous if also a bit more blunt and upfront, with more emphasis on percussive elements. The D1’s tonal balance sat a bit lower, therefore its low end was more present and meaty. In the highs the tables turned. The Level 7’s treble was richer. Both models shared the same decay and colours. Practice showed that the D1 didn’t differentiate recording quality like its more direct opponent. The D1 was all about fantastic black backgrounds, smoothness, neutrality and military sorting, rather than exposing every nuance and being completely transparent like the Level 7. The Asian was darker and rounder than LampizatOr's two-piece set, at times more intimate. The D1 simply wasn’t acting as a musical magnifying glass. Neither was its Polish opponent but it was still more revealing. Nonetheless, after hearing the Level 7 for several hours, then switching to the COS Engineering, desire to revert to the Lampi was entirely absent. Both were very good at what they did. Both performed on the same level yet were styled completely different. Back then the Level 7 seemed to me the more organic and lifelike, often highlighting the foreground and diminishing listener distance. The D1 was the more sober and coherent. It showed its class with coherence, smoothness and accuracy.

I also compared the D1 to a Reimyo DAP-999 to float this conclusion: the Taiwanese had far more in common with the Japanese PCM1704U-K based DAC than the Polish Level 7. It really had been a fair match between the Level 7 and D1. In the end I tended to prefer the former a bit but it was merely a subjective feeling dictated by my own preferences. Those two DACs were quality apples and oranges. Many people might much prefer the D1's sound and I wouldn’t be surprised. With the Golden Gate moving into battle, the winds changed. The D1 was prepped but its performance now was displaced. It remained most likeable because of its calm and natural presentation, overall balance, dead silent background and excellent preamplifier stage. Yet the Golden Gate was audibly more organic and lifelike, denser, sweeter and more saturated yet not overly cuddly, warm or thick. I couldn't shake the feeling that it did exactly what my Level 7 does, just more of the same to deepen intensity and richness. Whether I used the Boenicke Audio W5, Trenner&Friedl Art or KEF LS50 speakers didn’t matter. The outcome was always very lifelike and texturally wet.