Chris Berens on the Audeze & dCS Lina Headphone Amplifier
Earlier this year we invited our friends at Abyss, Audeze, Meze and ZMF to create a custom fascia design for the Lina Headphone Amplifier. You can read more about the concept & discover each brand's creative designs here.) Audeze took inspiration from their distinctive logo and the grill design seen on their headphones, adorning the amp’s volume dial with a striking geometric pattern.
We caught up with Chris Berens, head of Artist Relations at Audeze, to ask him some further questions on his team's creative design and production process, ahead of their appearance at CanJam Dallas 2024...
"We could not be happier with how the final product turned out, now we're all fighting over who gets to take it to the trade shows..."
Could you tell us a little more about your design, and why you opted for this?
We'd been using the Lina stacks at trade shows since they were released, and everyone seemed to enjoy the feel and finish of the volume knob; that XL knob just called out for the "A" grille design we've been putting on t-shirts and stickers for years. We thought ‘how fun would it be for listeners to be able to interact with our logo as they turn the knob?’, and lo-and-behold, that's exactly how it turned out: fun!
During the planning process, our creative director also noticed that the dCS designers kindly left room to the left of their own logo for us to put ours next to it on the faceplate, so that tied the whole thing together in the spirit of collaboration that our companies enjoy with each other.
What was the process on your side – so how did you approach this project?
Once we agreed to partner on the idea and got the technical drawings from the dCS team, it was pretty easy to scale the logos to fit the spaces, and since we already have a laser engraving machine that we use on some of our headphone parts, it was just a matter of getting our team to set it up and make it happen.
Our designer sent the scaled logo files to our engineers, and they ran some quick tests that came out well. Then when we got the finished parts from dCS, we ran two each of the knob and faceplate through the engraving process and they both came out perfectly! Then we sent the engraved parts back to dCS for assembly into the finished amp, and voilà!
What interested or excited you about this particular project?
Audeze and dCS share a common design aesthetic: we both love clean and simple lines, and we have a similar attraction to the pebbly/smooth matte black topcoats found on the LCD series and Lina stack. We knew right away that our logo would be a perfect fit on the volume knob.
We also share a love of great sound of course, so our products mesh together really well on both fronts! It certainly also helps that both companies have good people working on these projects so we could actually make the ideas come to fruition.
Were there particular challenges you faced – for example any particular challenges that came up in terms of implementing / realising your idea?
The biggest challenge (as usual) was the logistical and shipping side of things and being able to get it done in a timely manner! Once we got that sorted, it was actually very easy to do. The biggest hurdle we faced in the actual design process was how to line up our "A" logo with the marker dot on the knob, after about three emails and two design mockups, it was clear that the dot should be at the apex of the A and we finalized it almost instantly.
We literally could not be happier with how the final product turned out, and now we're all fighting over who gets to take it to the trade shows we're all doing in the coming months!
- Chris Berens, Audeze
The Audeze & dCS Lina Headphone Amplifier on demo at Audeze's stand, CanJam SoCal 2024
The dCS & Audeze Lina Headphone Amplifier will be available to demo at CanJam Dallas, held at the Dallas/Addison Marriott Quorum from 2-3 November 2024.
