Aqua LinQ streamer and La Scala MkII Optologic DAC

The LinQ has four module slots for alternative renderers, a galvanically isolated output stage with connections to dual and single AES outputs, coax and BNC SPDIF and the aforementioned AQLink plus a LAN connector for hook up to the network. There’s no Wi-Fi connection nor any option for wireless streaming over Bluetooth or Airplay to the LinQ; it is dedicated to the delivery of maximum fidelity as one might hope.

My research started with the La Scala DAC alone which was connected directly to a Melco N10 45th Anniversary server via USB. I generally use a streamer in my digital set ups but the Melco’s own output was outplaying my rather more affordable streamer. This configuration produced an articulate and revealing result that was very easy to enjoy, there was no sense of obvious valvey-ness in the tonal balance which seemed very even handed and capable of delivering excellent bass lines. My notes do mention depth of tone early on however and that is often a result of thermionic devices being involved, and one reason why Beethoven’s String Quartets sounded so open, lyrical and fluent. Dynamics were excellent too, this was apparent with the quartet and a track by Jim O’Rourke [‘Friends with Benefits’, Simple Songs, Drag City)]which was also really well articulated, every inflection of the bittersweet song was clear and fluent.

La Scala also proved to be very good at revealing the reverb on every voice and acoustic instrument played, even Radiohead’s largely electric/electronic ‘Desert Island Disk’ [Moon Shaped Pool, XL] has an acoustic guitar with apparently natural reverb that defines the space it was captured in. Even Thom Yorke’s muttered lyrics were easy to comprehend on ‘Ful Stop’ (sic), a song that offered up a genuinely rich pageant of sound. The Melco N10 is a very fine server (the best I’ve tried in a long while) but you need a decent DAC to get this much out of it, and I did wonder whether the LinQ would be able to bring much more to the party. It turns out that I underestimated its potential quite severely, so much so in fact that I regretted not adding it to the system earlier. OK, so using HQPlayer into a streamer requires a license (the desktop software costs £225) and apparently the Roon integration took a bit of work, but once again why is this not more popular? I can only think that implementation is, as ever, a significant part of the equation.

Initially I put on Van Morrison’s ‘The Way Young Lovers Do’ [Astral Weeks, Warner Bros], which isn’t the slickest of recordings and generally sounds that way, here it had a coherence and lack of hash that was quite striking. It’s almost as if the streamer is stripping away everything that isn’t music and presenting the DAC with the signal alone in a precise yet fluent form that sounds so right it’s uncanny. It’s listening at a higher level, chakras fully aligned with the light of musical communication precisely focused yet natural in its pinpoint imaging and dynamic energy. All of which allows the listener to appreciate just how the composition was recorded and engineered without this analysis getting in the way of the musical beauty. On the next track from Astral Weeks, the sublime ‘Madame George’, for instance the voice still sounds a little ‘hot’ but the strings, the guitar and the bass are all clear and there appears to be none of the hash, the subtle graininess that old analogue recordings seem to gain when converted to digital. As the youth of today might say this is next level shit.

Roon picked Christian Scott [‘Angola, LA & the 13th Amendment’, Yesterday You Said Tomorrow, Concord Jazz] for me to listen to next, I do like the way it will find something vaguely similar in your library that may have been overlooked or forgotten, this had a dynamic energy that made the advantages of modern recording methods very clear. The drums having real power that reinforces the visceral quality that the LinQ is so good at revealing, the immediacy produced making the band sound so real. There is really no option to change tracks half way through when the sound is this good, even an unfamiliar piece like this really brings a lump to the throat. Going back to ‘Desert Island Disk’ I started to hear the way that different sounds are faded in and out of the mix and give it a magical quality. It’s also clear that the vocal has been softened a little to achieve a more homogenous blend with the backing. Going for something more stripped back I played ‘All I Want’ from Blue [Joni Mitchell’s now 50 year old early masterpiece, on A&M], the digital version of this can often sound thin even though it’s in high res but here there was no emphasis on tonal balance; the focus was on the emotional honesty of the singer and the song. That and the acoustic guitar from Stephen Stills and the fact that there’s a mandolin in there that had never attracted my attention before. Roon picked out Stills’ ‘Blind Fiddler Medley’ [Stills Alone, Vision/Gold Hill] as a follow up which sounds superb. I’ve used Roon with a few streamers over the years and often thought that simpler and far less user friendly control apps sounded better; in this application it clearly wasn’t getting in the way but it’s not doing so much of the heavy lifting either.

The Aqua pairing is very good at revealing differences in recording quality to the extent that those made in the digital era are generally more powerful and have stronger bass than their analogue predecessors. Both types of recording sound great however the distinction is stronger than with less revealing digital sources. A dramatic reduction in time smear is one of the many benefits of these units and the LinQ in particular, timing has long been the an area where analogue sources excel but here we find digital putting up a particularly strong fight and this makes all music sound better and live music often the best. Bugge Wesseltoft, Dan Berglund and Magnus Ostrom’s Rymden trio put out a live album last year [Space Sailors Special Edition, Jazzland] where the playing is clearly superior to the studio versions of the same tracks. This is because it’s happening in real time in front of an audience, there is a pressure to perform well and that ups their game. The Aquas make this abundantly clear, the track ‘Pitter Patter’ for one is a stone cold killer thanks to the intensity of the drums and the steam coming off the Rhodes piano, steam you can almost feel with these components in line.