Dawid Grzyb weighs in with a 2nd opinion. In my setup, the ModWright Elyse was used in a 28m² damped basement room assisted by Goldenote 40Hz and 80Hz Drums bass traps placed in the corners. The test rig consisted of a Hegel H160 integrated, FirstWatt F7 and Sanders Audio Magtech amplifier with their complementary and separate preamplifier. Transport task was by laptop whilst Psvane WE101D-L, a DSD256 module and the volume control in the balanced LampizatOr Golden Gate DAC served as my $18'000 source reference. All of these components sat in/on a Lavardin K-Rak. Speakers were Boenicke Audio W8, the horn-loaded JWS Ifaisteio Tsimento and Xavian's Perla monitors. The cable loom was Forza AudioWorks and a Gigawatt PF-2 with LS-2 cord from the same company oversaw power delivery. Because the Elyse has no volume control, I needed one elsewhere. Fortunately a good one in the Sanders Audio preamp was on hand. To keep things consistent, Hegel's H160 was thus used as pure power amplifier, with the rest of its circuitry bypassed. The Golden Gate's TAIV VC-03 volume control too was bypassed simply by setting it to max. With all of my amplifiers single-ended only, LampizatOr's balanced outputs sat idle. And because their bread and butter is DSD, for it all PCM was upsampled via software to DirectStream Digital. Because the Elyse can't exploit DSD, I only used pure PCM files for comparison. Some might argue that comparing two machines in different formats is inappropriate. In most cases that would be true. With the Golden Gate's DSD module far superior to its stock PCM board and the entire raison-d'être for its existence, I simply had to compare Elyse/PCM to GG/DSD.

Listening. With expensive D/A converters, it's not all about tonal balance, saturation and similar. Those usually operate at a high level commensurate with the expense. It's really more about how such machines settle into the hardware environment surrounding them, which sonic system features are improved, which ones spoilt. Finally, it's about how the listener feels about those changes. To put things into perspective right off, I had a really fun ride with the Elyse. It nestled into all the configurations I threw at it. And I could easily live with this DAC. Yet after an extensive listening period, the quite predictable conclusion was that LampizatOr's 2.5 x costlier reference presented certain items not merely different but plainly better. Here's how it all shook out for me.

For my first test, the two-piece Sanders set drove Boenicke's W8. Those Swiss wood speakers demand a powerful amp to play it tight and coherent. That's why the Magtech was a good choice, confirmed by Sven Boenicke having personally used it at our Polish Warsaw hifi show two years back with grand success. With a formal W8 review booked with yours truly—and Srajan for the bigger W11—this is neither the time nor place to say more about it safe for one general observation: this design is capable of truly enormous soundstaging with exquisite smoothness. To fully tap this potential simply relies on top-shelf partners or else the frequency extremes become bottlenecks – good at best, distorted at worst. From this I concluded that the W8 would be good soothsayers about my system's general performance status.

After several source swaps, the Elyse revealed its first feature by contrast to its Polish rival, namely a stronger more present treble. It could be heard that Dan's circuit set its tonal centre a bit higher than LampizatOr's designer did. This caused a slight uptilt. The Golden Gate's decays were longer—this is a quality often prized with direct-heated triodes and the Western Electric replica 101D from Psvane is a premium example of that—and better differentiated. The Elyse played that aspect more damped, hence shorter though without any metallic tinge or harshness. Yet by contrast, the LampizatOr deck handled the same frequencies with more air, delicacy and smoothness. As a result, they also were a bit less present but to my ears adjudged properly. Both machines handled the midband in marvelous fashion but saturation still differed. The Elyse had the warm hue which didn't interfere with its signature clearness that suggested no veil anywhere in sight. The Golden Gate was at least equally open but applied a more contoured reading which defined vocals more explicitly. Whether that extra sculpting is viewed as desirable or not depends on the listener. These differences were fairly small. Plus, I strongly suspect that some tube rolling on the Elyse could easily shift the subjective balance of its treble. Being tube decks, both machines invite such experiments.

It was the bass which really drove home a different core voicing between them. LampizatOr's very best went deeper where the Elyse kicked from a higher altitude. The upper bass was a draw and textures were equally good with either. The Elyse's low end felt rounder and fatter where the Golden Gate kicked harder and faster. Both showed plenty of meatiness and neither overdid the either luscious or dry. Settling preferences, one would probably decide between more speed with greater damping; or a more leisurely attitude with a bit more colour. Either way, the Elyse was by no means ponderous. Equipped with the WE101D-L bottles, the LampizatOr is simply a very lively beast.

Thus far the tone/colour differences were fairly small – not subtle and plainly audible but still small. More extensive offset came with soundstaging. Both DACs could easily make the W8 vanish utterly from my basement room, no strange tricks involved. Yet moving the entire first row behind the speakers which had the front wall at 2 metres and merely 60cm clearance from the sidewalls? That would be a tougher task. Just so, both DACs got right to it, a very good sign. Still, each drew a different perspective for the listener. The LampizatOr cast the greater width whilst the ModWright focused more between the speakers. True, it still showed plenty of things outside the speakers, with no information dropped, but the Golden Gate rendered those anti-phase elements even more realistic, cogent, tangible and organic. This behaviour also injected more air around the performers. And that led to more spaciousness, separation and thus, definition. This was a decisive difference and the first time that the huge price gap between the ModWright and LampizatOr made itself felt strongly. To pin it to a concrete music example, on Värttina's "Linnunmieli", the Golden Gate was superior in depicting the distance of the three ladies to the listener and the distances between them. This I thought, wasn't a matter of taste but a function of which source brought me closer to the music and what was actually recorded.