Tempe Reference Room — System 2

Where System 1 in this room is about scale, this one is about resolution.

The Wilson Sasha V is the smaller of the two floor-standers here and gives up remarkably little for it. In front of it sits a genuinely uncommon pairing: dCS Lina digital — the Network DAC with its dedicated Master Clock — into Burmester amplification, a Cambridge-engineered digital front end and a Berlin-built amplifier chain.

The Master Clock matters more than its modest chassis suggests. Digital conversion is only as good as the timing reference behind it, and giving the DAC a dedicated clock rather than recovering timing from the incoming stream is where a large part of dCS's reputation comes from.

A system for people who want to hear into a recording rather than be impressed by it.