There are long standing threads for speaker and amplifier porn on HC. Thus far, sources have been neglected. It's true, speakers and amps are in general better looking units than most sources but there are certainly some good looking ones out there.

Let's start with a mid 80s Revox CDP that is a bit of a legend amongst collectors: The Revox B225. It's overbuilt like a MFer, which is good as it's also prone to failure and in need of extensive servicing. I just watched a really good YouTube video on repairing one while I was editing a whole stack of photos.

TL;DW: A whole pile of Swiss engineering, dirty electrical contacts and a new motor.

There were some variants with balanced out and at least one meant for professional use:
Love those green lights.

The following is less porn in the "hubba hubba" meaning and more in the "fake, unsatisfying and containing gratuitous bulbous objects" sense.

LampizatOr is a Polish based manufacturer of, ahem, "ultra high end" DACs, music servers and totally-not-snake-oil cables. They share a 90s l33t sp34k brand name similar to Switzerland's darTZeel (whom I have mocked mercilessly over the years.) Recently LampizatOr came out with a new DAC. It's called the Aphrodite, it has a bunch of tubes sticking out the top and can be yours for the low, low price is $105,000. Tariffs not included. The Aphrodite has tubes in places in the signal chain where tubes don't normally go. This "revolutionary" and "iconoclastic" design philosophy is enough to make one wonder where Mikhail Rotenberg scampered off to, but I digress... Anyway, on to the toobs like fake boobs:

Pardon me for a second. All that and USB A?!? In twenty twenty fucking SIX? Get with the USB-C times, old man.

The following photos were online in such absurdly large size that I had to scale them down, and I'm someone who shoots with a 45MP camera body.

I have legit never heard of "XDMI" before.

As someone with freakishly large hands and increasingly bad eyesight, this remote looks like pure pain to use.

Thank you for watching TubeDAC ...Tube. Maybe next time I'll post some Polish gear I actually like.

Edited Tuesday at 10:36 PM2 days by Knuckledragger

I've been source first since the start - in 2026, I think a lot of audio customers think source means streaming or their phone or laptop.

39 minutes ago, HiWire said:

I've been source first since the start - in 2026, I think a lot of audio customers think source means streaming or their phone or laptop.

I’m team performance then recording first. Without those the rest is irrelevant.

Lampazitor is such utter crap, almost as bad as Chord. Fucking hate that garbage.

The Revox & the Lampizator are interesting "bookends" to the overall thread. The former being how Lukasz started out, soldering DIY tubed output-stages to older TDA154x-based CD players, and the latter being his uber-expensive current offerings. Not sure if that was planned or not, but...touche' 👍

Can't comment on the latest Lampizator retail products, other than I think I've heard some models once or twice at meets over the years, and they sounded good in those specific instances. I've also heard Chord-based systems that sounded good under similar circumstances too.

Modern tech with vintage looks, Ruark R710 all in one system, basically, hook up a pair of speakers and you have everything. Heard it at an audio show a couple weeks ago and was surprised that an under $10k setup was one of the top 5 rooms at the show, it embarrassed the shit out of many mega-buck systems.

Yes, it also plays CDs.

If I had room for speakers, I'd be totally happy with this setup.

The Hitachi DA-1000 (and associated clones) is one of the earliest and most prized CD players. It's method of loading the CD can't accurately be described as unusual (at the time there was no defined normal) but it's certainly a striking one. Working examples change hands for a tidy sum. Even nonfunctional units are near to look at.

European market clone of the Hitatchi.

The fragile but very interesting looking CD loading mechanism.

When was the last time you saw a CDP with an output meter?

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by Knuckledragger