The May copy of Stereophile, just landed, contains a review of the full Lina stack in Herb Reichert’s “Gramophone Dreams” column. This is a follow-up to his March coverage of the Lina Headphone Amp.
The review isn’t up on the Stereophile website yet, although I expect it will be shortly. However suffice it to say Herb is impressed:
The chief thing I’ve learned from reviewing is how the best audio products are the ones that achieve long-term relevance. It’s not for nothing that the Klipschorn, Denon DL-103, Technics SL-1200, the Koetsu, the Ongaku, the Linn LP-12, and several versions of the BBC LS3/5a are still in production.
If any digital products that require periodic software upgrades could ever pass the long-term relevance test, it would be the Data Conversion System’s Lina Stack. The Lina 2.0 DAC, Master Clock, and headphone amplifier feel like they are operating on a performance plateau that will not easily or quickly be surpassed, which is what the above-mentioned products felt like when they were introduced.