I have an order in for the DS2 in, but it involves trading in my DS1/Bridge, which would give me a great DAC, but no source ahead of the AirLens coming onto the market. So, my local dealer suggested I bring in the Lindemann Bridge II between now and then, which I could use as credit for when the AirLens comes out.
It ticks the boxes Paul mentioned for a streamer a while back, being a separate, without a DAC and having galvanically isolated outputs. Having had it for a couple of days now and given a good run over the weekend, a couple of initial impressions…
- It’s beautifully made, is nice and small with a matt aluminium finish. It doesn’t look out of place with PS Audio’s “silver” BHK & DS.
- Hooking it up to the DS1 (and removing connections to the PS Audio Bridge II), there’s much better timbre and depth of sound compared to the same material played through PS Audio’s Bridge II. I am seeing toe tapping from family members. While connecting via toslink provided greater depth than the PS Audio Bridge II, it but was a bit etchy and wouldn’t go beyond 96k. Coaxial – ahh, that’s better, the sound is more rounded out.
- It has two output settings; native mode (outputting the signal in the same rate as the original – unless its DSD or MQA), or upsampling. I found the music lost its weight / body / slam in the upsampling mode, through to the DS1.
- It doesn’t get hot. The unit is barely warm to touch in operation.
- It relies on Roon to do the work for MQA and DSD. Maybe it’s because the unit does PCM a fair bit better than the PS Audio Bridge, but I was pleasantly surprised by how well the combination of Roon and the Lindemann went for MQA and DSD. Roon authenticated the MQA to 352k/24b before it was output as 88k/24 PCM, whereas DSD64 got converted to 352k/32b, before being output as 176/24 PCM. I expect the AirLens will trump it here by unfolding MQA, supporting DSD256 and PCM 352.
- The Lindemann App is handy, but not in the same league as Roon. Its airable radio feature is quite a bonus. It brings up way more local radios stations than I’ve seen in Roon. Also, some radio stations are available in higher resolution than the same stations via Roon. WFMT sounds good in Roon, but glorious via airable, feeding through from 32bit/48k.
- Perhaps the one thing I miss about having the PS Audio Bridge II is the ability to start, stop, skip tracks, power on and off with the one remote. Roon and the Lindemann app can turn the Lindemann Bridge II on and off, or you can do this via a switch on the unit. Pause, skip, stop is done by smartphone/computer.
- It will let you hook up an external USB CD drive. The music is cached in memory and then streamed. I found sound via the CD drive was as good as the ripped version of the same within Roon, after the initial whirring into action from the disk drive passed. I didn’t get any album art or track title info when doing this, but it seems that’s possible via the Apple USB Superdrive if one was inclined.
So all up, quite worth a look.