The heart of your Lina system, our powerful network streaming DAC delivers extraordinary sound from any digital source

- Compatible with all digital audio formats
- Supports hi-res streaming from Roon, TIDAL, Qobuz, Spotify, Deezer, AirPlay & more
- Features our renowned dCS Ring DAC TM and Digital Processing Platform

Key Features

dCS Ring DAC™ system and Digital Processing Platform ensure audio is reproduced with absolute integrity, for a highly detailed, musical and deeply natural sound.

dCS Mosaic platform supports hi-res streaming via Roon, Spotify, Deezer, Qobuz, TIDAL, Internet Radio and Apple AirPlay.

Patented dCS Expanse technology offers enhanced headphone optimisation, for a more natural and immersive experience when listening to a wide range of stereo recordings.

Touch screen UI with customisable menu allows listeners to easily control playback and adjust system settings.

Flexible firmware provides unlimited scope for future upgrades, with new features and enhancements delivered via simple software updates.

All-new electronic and mechanical design delivers a vast range of features in a compact and elegant format, while digital volume control function removes need for separate pre-amp.

About the Lina DAC

The Lina Network Streaming DAC is both a continuation and a new beginning. Its design combines renowned dCS technologies and all of the benefits listeners have come to expect from a dCS DAC with a wealth of new innovations, including an all-new mechanical design, plus new technologies developed specifically for headphone listening. It is a complete reimagining of form and function, created with the same relentless focus and ambition as our world-renowned Bartók, Rossini and Vivaldi DACs.

The DAC utilises proprietary dCS playback technologies, including the famous dCS Ring DAC™ and our endlessly flexible Digital Processing Platform, to deliver a deeply natural, highly detailed, and profoundly musical sound. With its wide dynamic range, crisp, clear playback, expansive soundstage, and tonal neutrality, it delivers a highly revealing and compelling performance that uncovers the true depth and essence of a recording.

Its powerful flex-rigid circuit board enables us to deliver a huge range of features in a compact chassis (our smallest yet). The result is a supremely capable product that caters to a wide range of settings, including rooms where space is at a premium.

Add unique headphone optimisation technology, a high-performance streaming platform, and digital volume control enabling use in systems without a preamp, and you have a hugely versatile source that delivers a spectacular performance in a vast range of setups. Designed to inspire, inform and entertain, it will give you a whole new perspective on the artists and recordings you love.

Lina 2.0 A major performance upgrade for the Lina Network DAC

Lina 2.0 brings a range of new features, including new Mapper settings, filter options, and balance controls, to the Lina Network DAC. In addition to launching the Lina 1.1 update in March this year, we have been working on a substantial software upgrade for the Lina Network DAC. The Lina Network DAC 2.0 update brings several new features that are designed to enhance performance, aid ease of use, and give listeners more control over their playback experience. It is available to new and existing Lina Network DAC owners and is provided free of charge.

Highlights include - Two new Mapper settings
Lina 2.0 brings two new Mapper settings to the Lina Network DAC. These settings – first introduced in the dCS Vivaldi, Rossini and Bartók ranges – enable the Ring DAC to operate at double speed [5.6 or 6.14MS/s].
These additional settings are the result of careful refinement and continuous development. Since releasing the original Mapper [now MAP 2], we have continued to refine our process and improve jitter performance. We are now able to offer the option of a higher ring rate – a development which, in turn, allows us to move matching noise further out of the audible band – along with other improvements and refinements to our mapping algorithm. Listeners can now choose from double-speed settings or the original dCS Mapper to suit their preference.

DSD128 Upsampling
A new DSD128 upsampling feature, as seen in the dCS Vivaldi, Rossini and Bartók DACs and Players, allows the Lina Network DAC to convert PCM audio to DSD at a greater speed, pushing noise higher in the frequency range [to somewhere above 40kHz]. This, in turn, allows the use of gentler filters. Depending on a listener’s music choice, this can result in improved spatial presentation and a more natural, nuanced sound.

New PCM and DSD Filters
All dCS DACs provide a range of carefully designed filter options, allowing listeners to select the setting that best suits their music and preferences. The Lina Network DAC launched in 2022 with a choice of two filters, F1 and F2, for ease of use. The 2.0 update brings four new PCM filters, plus an additional DSD filter [F5] with a relaxed roll-off and smoother phase response. This brings the number of filters available with the Lina Network DAC in line with our Rossini and Bartók DACs, and gives listeners even more control over their system’s performance.

Balance Controls
An additional balance control function allows listeners to adjust left and right balance when listening with headphones or loudspeakers. This means Lina Network DAC owners can now adjust the volume of each channel in isolation, and compensate for volume differences between left and right channels – whether due to system challenges such as non-ideal speaker placement, or auditory imbalances – for a more natural presentation of sound.

Text Size Settings for Distance Listening
A user interface update offers the option to increase text size on the Lina Network DAC’s LED display, making it easier to read track titles when listening to the product from a distance.

Remote Control Support
It is now possible to control the Lina Network DAC with a dCS remote control or generic remote. See the Lina Network DAC 2.0 release notes for more information.

The upgrade builds on our vision to create a versatile DAC that excels in a vast range of audio setups – including headphone and loudspeaker-based systems – and deliver all the benefits listeners have come to expect from dCS. It is the result of extensive development and is made possible through Lina's flexible architecture. We’ll release further information on our 2.0 software, and the features included with this upgrade – including more detailed insights into dCS filters and mappers – over the next few weeks. For now, we hope listeners take great pleasure exploring all this upgrade has to offer, and the performance advantages it brings.

Download Lina 2.0
Lina Network DAC 2.0 is available via the dCS Mosaic Control app from October 17, 2023. You can download the latest version of dCS Mosaic Control for iOS and Mosaic Control for Android. The dCS Mosaic Control app has been updated to provide support for Lina Network DAC 2.0, along with new features available for all dCS devices with network streaming capabilities. For more information, see our Mosaic 1.42 release notes.

Effortless listening
While the Lina Network DAC offers a vast range of features, it is designed with simplicity, convenience and ease of use in mind. Its streamlined user interface allows you to easily navigate system settings, select music and manage your playback experience, while the dCS Mosaic app offers an intuitive and painless way to browse and access music from multiple sources and audio libraries. With a choice of inputs and outputs, and user selectable filters, it allows you to seamlessly enjoy audio from any source, in any format, without compromise.

Unlimited potential
The Lina Network DAC’s performance is driven by a completely flexible control board - the dCS Digital Processing Platform. This powerful, robust and highly intelligent system operates on code written by dCS engineers, and it can be endlessly updated to deliver any number of new features and enhancements. This means we are able to continue upgrading Lina’s performance over time, and ensure that each system delivers a state-of-the-art experience long after it’s purchased.

Scrupulous design
Crafted from billet aluminium (a material selected for its excellent acoustic properties), the Lina Network DAC has been meticulously designed to deliver the finest possible sound, with the lowest possible levels of distortion and noise. Each aspect of its design - from its billet aluminium casework, to its internal fixings and components, and proprietary hardware and software - is carefully engineered and exhaustively tested to ensure it provides the best possible experience, and the highest levels of quality and reliability. This holistic approach and obsessive attention to detail is one of the reasons that dCS DACs sound so sublime.

Incredible sound
At the heart of all dCS DACs is the Ring DAC™: a proprietary digital-to-analogue conversation system renowned for its ultra-wide bandwidth, technical accuracy, and ability to reveal astonishing levels of detail in digital recordings - from the subtlest of sounds, to the sense of time and harmonic movement, and the atmosphere that surrounds a musical performance. This unique component is an integral part of our systems, and remains unrivalled in its sonic and technical abilities.

Extraordinary technology
At the heart of Lina’s design is a powerful flex-rigid circuit board housing over 2,000 individual components. Designed by dCS engineers, this extraordinary piece of technology allows us to combine all of Lina’s core functions and features on to a single circuit. This not only saves space, it also allows us to deliver an incredibly clean signal path, which is essential for great audio.

Enhanced optimisation
Available to all Lina Network DAC owners, dCS Expanse is a unique headphone processing platform which offers an enhanced version of crossfeed optimisation. With its unique multi-stage processing method, Expanse optimises audio while preserving the reverberation in a recording (something that is crucial to helping us localise sounds, and establish a sense of space and depth.) Accessed via two optional settings, it can provide a heightened sense of realism when listening to a wide range of stereo recordings.

A stunning addition to the high-end head-fi landscape, dCS’s Lina comprises a network DAC, master clock and analogue headphone amplifier, all built to the same exacting standard and designed to be neatly stacked. Supporting streamed and wired digital sources up to 384kHz/DSD128, the Lina DAC is the beating heart of the system, and employs dCS’s proven RingDAC technology to bring music to life with remarkable clarity and detail. The fully-balanced amplifier, meanwhile, has the energy and punch to work with even the most demanding of headphones. Interoperability between the three units is handled by ‘Power Link’ connectivity, and dCS’s Mosaic Control app offers music selection, upsampling/filter choice, and much more.

No other company could conceive, design, and manufacture the Lina headphone amplifier package, which is the sum total of several unique things that come together. The company's roots in aerospace and defence contracting set it on a path of technical excellence, as did its founder's passion for music and high-end hi-fi. What followed were decades of pushing the envelope with digital audio, literally leading the industry. Then came dCS's decision to commit to headphones; the result is what you see here. It may be spectacularly priced, but head-fi fans can do no better.