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LampizatOr- The Horizon DAC Manual
Horizon design
This DAC is like no other, mainly due to the fact it is using dual triodes as DAC output
converters to voltage and power pentodes as triode loads, triode buffers and voltage
stabilisers at the same time. The power pentodes seem to be much too large and much
to expenceive to be used as "small signal" tubes. Thats why the decision to use them is
so beautifully radical and extreme, worthy of high end status.
Big power pentodes like EL34, KT66, KT88, KT120, 150 and 170 are ridiculously
overspecified for the job in this circuit but thats the key to this big, bold, effortless sound
that noone else can match, they offer in return a sound signature that is simply craved
by high end audiophiles and music afficionados around the world. The sound
becomess effortless, powerful but delicate, smooth but detailed, well controlled but
musical, three-dimensional and gorgeous at the same time. This is partly due to the
fact that the radiation and absorbtion areas of these triodes are tens of times larger
than those found in small tubes, making electron density much smaller and the flow is
much easier. This for some reaqson sounds better.
The Heaters of our DAC are AC type, precisely controlled and safely limited in both
voltage and current. Our heater circuits provide good protection for long life of these
tubes..
The Anode High Voltage is supplied with our propriatory tube power supply, consisting
of a very gigh grade toroidal transformer, one EI-transformer, Dual Diode directly
heated rectifier, a choke and capacitor filter and passive filtration and energy storage
stages. After the rectifier diode tube - the supplies split into dual mono. (in fact into
quad-mono considering the two phases per channel)
Balanced Operation is possible because we employ a fully balanced digital engine that
produces 4 analog outputs simultaneously:
Left Negative, Left Positive, Right Positive and Right Negative.
All four outputs are treated equally, get their individual volume control ladder, individual
filtering, signal shaping, and amplification by one tube each. Thats why we have 4
triodes per DAC and additional 4 big pentodes for Anode Loading.
Triode, pentode and Rectifier swapping (rolling) is described elsewhere in the manual.
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