Lina to me is kinda... Strange
A lot of strange design choices (from type of units to features and others) along with pricing.
A lot of strange design choices (from type of units to features and others) along with pricing.
CHORD ELECTRONICS DAVE
- Thread starter magiccabbage
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To be honest, a few hours before it was announced I was sure I'd jump on the bandwagon for something like that. It's just too bad DCS decided to double down on being a lifestyle brand instead of "only" a cutting edge Hi-fi company. The stack is clearly meant to be an aspirational product more than anything else. Too bad it doesn't look like one.I'd absolutely love to try the Lina.
I imagine after my Bartok review though they might be somewhat reluctant to lend me one
I have a friend who is planning to get the full stack though so hopefully I'll be able to borrow his if dCS says no.
It's basically an overpriced Bartok + Clock in an undersized package. I could maybe see the Headphone amp being interesting, however I can't go back to the M-scaler days and not have the flexibility and performance of Hqplayer.
I can’t understand the thinking behind the dCS Lina as a $30,000 headphone system given the best flagships like the Utopia and Susvara are $4,400-4,700. I’m surprised they brought the Lina to light considering the limited market and I imagine it would only have a handful of buyers even in Asia.
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I think their strategy is to get people to buy one component first (maybe the dac or amp) and then maybe buy the other components later. I'm curious to read reviews of the Lina, but for $30K, I'd definitely spend my money elsewhere.
sm60
100+ Head-Fier
I’m sure Nordost will be happy to sell you a 1 meter Odin cable or power cord for 30 grand. Most exotic boutique hifi products, whether by dCS or Nordost or anyone else, are not designed for rational human beings. They cater largely to people with too much money on their hands. For that clientele, the money is a side issue. Heck, if an NFT of a tweet can sell for 2 million dollars, what’s wrong with a $30K power cord? At least it does something (of course, the same thing can be done by a $5 power cord from Amazon, but that’s hardly going to matter).
It’s worth stepping back and understanding what’s limiting true high fidelity. One of the best stereo demonstration albums I’ve ever heard was the original Stereophile test disc, which had J. Gordon Holt, the founder of Stereophile, simply reading a passage on audio reviewing. What made it spellbinding was that every second sentence was recorded on a different microphone. It was astonishing to see how colored each microphone was. Some made his gravelly voice sound nasal, some made it sound very bright etc. The segment ended with some really expensive low coloration microphones, I forget now the brand, might have been Neumann or something else, where his voice sounded like it would if he was standing next to you.
Once the recording is made with a lousy microphone, what you do afterwards matters little, whether you use a 100 grand dCS DAC or a $500 Topping DAC. The sad reality is 99% of recordings are made with truly awful microphones.
Agreed. dCS says the Lina was, "...developed exclusively for the headfi community" (note the capitalization to differentiate from Head-Fi). However, the small hobbyist personal audio community is completely different than home+theater audiophiles and I'm just not sure the market is there for a $30,000 system. That said, it makes Chord's product strategy with the Mojo/2, Hugo/2, and DAVE look all the more genius.
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Another sad fact about recordings is the failure to mix while paying proper attention to the phase relationships between the various tracks recorded using mics scattered all over the place.
This is why for example you get piano concertos with a giant piano spreading across the soundstage. Quite apart from the ridiculous mics shoved right inside the piano.
No acoustic instrument should be miked up close. The sound of an instrument is in general a blend of different sounds emanating from different parts of the instrument and these need distance for the blending to happen properly.
The joy of what the DAVE can do is alloyed with the horror of these recording deficiencies being ruthlessly dissected and exposed to quailing ears.
Head-fi has created a market for status symbols in the community, so they are catering to that. It's only a 34k euro system if people line up to buy it, if not...we all know how inflated pricing is depending on region.Agreed. dCS says the Lina was, "...developed exclusively for the headfi community" (note the capitalization to differentiate from Head-Fi). However, the small hobbyist personal audio community is completely different than home+theater audio audiophiles and I'm just not sure the market is there for a $30,000 system. That said, it makes Chord's product strategy with the Mojo/2, Hugo/2, and DAVE look all the more genius.
The fact that they also produce low volumes allows them to force things in this manner.
Sampajanna
100+ Head-Fier
My dealer said that I should let the Lampi Pac sit a week or two before shipping off my Dave rig to him, just to make sure i like the new sound better, Five seconds…. Literally five seconds of the first track was all it took. I was not expecting this much of an upgrade. Wow! Expletives are all that suffice… Pardon me while I go curse out loud! Beg, borrow or scrape your nickels together and get a Lampi Pac is my sincere advice.
A dealer will usually say that because of the 'honeymoon period'.
When you get a new device in, it often will appear as an enormous, drastic improvement, especially if the overall sound signature is fairly different (as is likely the case with the lampizator).
But over the course of a couple weeks you might start to notice drawbacks more, or find it to be more of a change and less of an improvement.
You might not, and you might well love the lampi over the dave to the same extent in 2 weeks as you do now.
But it's definitely wise to use and compare stuff for a week or two as the initial 'honeymoon period' can often be misleading
sm60
100+ Head-Fier
Couldn’t have put it better myself. The Lampi PAC opens up a new world of enjoyment. But I’m still hanging on to my Blu/ Dave and using it in a second system.
801evan
Headphoneus Supremus
My new builds always sound awesome on a fresh start because it hasn't been broken in yet. Then on day 2-3 I start to hear it opening up and it'll start to show issues. Day 4-6 I wouldn't even bother listening. It's around 2 weeks when I can start judging it officially. And I'm just talking about swapping out plugs/sockets/resistors on this one.
Yeah, the honeymoon period is real. Sometimes it has even lasted for a month (specifically for me with the Solitaire Ps). Though, I'm very curious to hear about how you like the Lampi Pac after a period of time.
Sampajanna
100+ Head-Fier
Thanks for all the wonderful insight and advice guys. I will indeed wait and see how it settles in. For now, I am thoroughly enjoying this. I cannot even skip ahead on the test track list—I have to listen to every single second.
Sampajanna
100+ Head-Fier
Initial observations: The soundstage was between the speakers and now they are gone, completely gone. The room is music. It feels liquid, tacit. You can touch it, lick it 
It honestly feels like sitting in a bath of sound. I thought there would be a trade off in detail but there isnt. I have the RK PX25 and 5U4G tubes, Detail is equal to the Dave, but impact, bloom, soundstage imaging are up up a notch or three, Emotional involvement is Pacific ocean size…. Like a real honeymoon, there is no time for sleep
It honestly feels like sitting in a bath of sound. I thought there would be a trade off in detail but there isnt. I have the RK PX25 and 5U4G tubes, Detail is equal to the Dave, but impact, bloom, soundstage imaging are up up a notch or three, Emotional involvement is Pacific ocean size…. Like a real honeymoon, there is no time for sleep Users who are viewing this thread
