Over the past few years, we’ve been hugely excited to see so many people embracing headphone listening. We’ve been thrilled to see vast numbers of music lovers and audiophiles attending global meetups and engaging with dedicated platforms and forums such as head-fi.org. We’ve also been excited to see an increase in the number of innovative, brilliantly crafted and beautifully designed headphones available to consumers today. The tremendous passion and enthusiasm of the headfi community - from the listeners, to the makers, to specialist retailers and content creators - has inspired all of us at dCS, and it’s something we set out to celebrate with the creation of our latest product range: dCS Lina.
Lina is the first dCS product series designed specifically for headphone listeners. Launching this month, it includes a dedicated Network DAC, Headphone Amplifier and Master Clock, which can be purchased individually or as a complete system.
With Lina, we set out to create the definitive system for headphone playback - one that reveals the full potential of your chosen headphones, plus the full breadth of detail, artistry and emotion in your music. Our aim from the outset was to create a product range that would complement any headfi setup, and deliver all the benefits people have come to expect from dCS in a compact, timeless and elegant format.
This concept originated from the development of the dCS Bartók: a streaming DAC with in-built upsampler, pre-amplifier and optional Class A headphone amplifier, which we released in 2018. The Bartok was designed to support both headphone and stereo listening, and the feedback we received from both the headfi and hi-fi communities was hugely positive.
Through making the system, we learned a great deal about headphone amplification and playback, and the unique requirements of headphone listeners. This experience - coupled with the Bartók’s success - inspired go one step further and create a new product range tailor-made for headphone listening.
Achieving this required a completely new approach to product design, and a different way of thinking. Each element of the system has been carefully considered and developed with headphone listeners in mind, and we’ve worked hard to deliver the same level of quality and the same highly detailed, transparent and musical sound that people have come to expect from dCS, while also developing new features and functions that reflect the differences in headphone versus two-channel listening.
Our talented engineering team have developed all-new electronic and mechanical designs, plus a new touch screen UI, and new circuitry that has tested the limits of PCB design. The result is a system that delivers a huge range of features, yet is compact enough to live in a range of environments, from bedrooms and living rooms to shared workspaces.
The new range is the culmination of over two years of intensive development, and it’s one we’re incredibly proud of. Through dedication, innovation and meticulous craftsmanship, we’ve developed a series that we believe is unrivalled in its field, and offers an exceptional experience for all headphone listeners.
Lina will be available to order direct from dCS, and via a select network of specialist retailers. Products will begin shipping in June, and we will be accepting pre-orders from May 24th onwards.
You can find out more about the system at dcsaudio.com/lina
To celebrate Lina’s launch, we’ll be releasing a wide range of content - including short films and articles exploring the system’s design and development - throughout May and June 2022. Content will be shared via email, social media, and the dCS Edit. If you’d like to receive updates, you can follow us at @dcsonlythemusic, or sign up to our Lina mailing list here
