The Lina system with its compact form factor is ideal for expansion of the product range with further devices.
For me a Roon Core in a Lina chassis would be really nice. Roon with all it’s DSP features, internal harddrive to store your music is pretty cool and currently not available natively from dCS.
An external Upsampler (think Vivaldi Upsampler but in the Lina range) and DSD converter could also be neat.
Maybe roon core and Upsampler could be combined in one device even?
Also an Electrostatic headphone amplifier is still missing in the lineup.
I’m a extensive user of electrostatic speakers and have often wondered about using Stax (or equivalent electrostatic headphones) on my Rossini/Chord combination.
It looks pretty straightforward with modern Stax ( and I expect other) energisers. They have a choice of analogue XLR or RCA inputs so you just use one of the matching outputs of your Rossini. You can use Rossini’s RCA or XLR outputs simultaneously if you wish e.g XLR to amplifier and RCA to Stax energiser. Obviously you won’t be using the Stax units which include a DAC nor is the Chord amplification necessary for the energiser.
If I remember older Stax units required speaker level analogue inputs. Current units specify input as 100mV/100V though which I find confusing.
Yes, at least one did: I recall owning an entry level energiser that did not require mains power and was just driven from the speaker terminals of a normal amplifier. This was back in the 1990s. The energiser I had after that - a ‘proper’ amplifier with mains power input and valves (vacuum tubes) to drive the 'phones - had the normal line level inputs. I don’t think there was anything unusual about their sensitivity. I’d be surprised if it was different these days.