dCS Lina DAC $13,650 Review

https://www.whathifi.com/reviews/dcs-lina-dac

Large-scale dynamic shifts are rendered with skill while more delicate changes in intensity are reproduced with the finesse they deserve. We could break down the performance by input but there isn’t any need here. While there has never been any question about the quality of dCS’s DAC designs we haven’t always been totally convinced that the streaming module performs to quite the same standards. That isn’t an issue here, as we’re as happy using the Lina as music streamer, across any of its sources, as we are using the digital inputs.

We give the various headphone processing modes a listen and find that the standard Crossfeed setting works well, as does the first Expanse option. Both of these manage to shift our reference Yamaha YH-5000SE’s soundstaging more to that which we hear from speakers, and we notice little in the way of distracting phase effects. Of the two, we end up listening to the dCS Expanse the most. The second Expanse mode doesn’t work so well for us, sounding a little disjointed.