This is a (performance) review and detailed measurements of the Linn Akurate DSM DAC and networked streamer. A local member kindly brought it over to our house to measure. It retails for .... get ready for it... USD $10,250. Yes, we are moving up in the world!
Linn is a Scottish company that has a long tradition/history among audiophiles although most of it earned through their legendary turntables than digital technology.
I had a lot of fun chatting with the owner of it so forgot to take a picture of it. Here is the stock photo from Linn's site:
The unit is quite substantial and with luxury feel.
Due to shortness of time, I did not have a chance to play much with its functionality. I was pleased that it supported Roon Endpoint and I could stream full 24-bit, high sample rate content to it with equal performance to its S/PDIF input which I used for testing.
Why S/PDIF input? Oddly there is no USB input on Linn Akurate DSM. So no way to use it as a USB DAC unless you buy a USB to S/PDIF bridge.
We downloaded their app for Windows to control it since we didn't have the remote. The Akurate DSM comes with Linn's interesting room EQ which does NOT rely on measurements. The owner had configured it such and we had to turn that off for testing.
For streaming functionality you need to download their app naturally to your favorite device. I personally am not a fan of such functionality. I don't believe that each one of these companies can keep up with likes of Roon in having a fully functional, rich and ever evolving and stable app. So that functionality is lost on me.
There are tons of inputs and outputs on the unit as it can be used as a pre-amp. In the interest of time, I only tested the unit as a DAC by feeding it S/PDIF and measuring its balanced output. Let's see how she performed.
Measurements
As usual, we start with our dashboard view:
The Akurate DSK checks the right boxes with 4 volt output.
On performance, it sets a new precedence by easily exceeding its stated spec! Distortion is far lower than 0.002%, clocking almost an order of magnitude lower at 0.0003%. Perhaps they use a wider bandwidth when measuring THD+N than I use (22.4 kHz). Regardless, it is a pleasure to see such conservative rating.
This puts the Linn Akurate DSM at the top of our performance quadrants:
They have announced a new generation of their DACs which higher performance so maybe those will grab the crown of the best DAC we have tested. For now, it falls a bit short of the best of the best which one would expect at this price point.
Switching to dynamic range, we see the same trend of honest reporting:
Right on the money.
Intermodulation distortion is not rated and unfortunately disappoints in noise department:
But nicely makes up for it in having no distortion at max level (no upward trend in the graph).
Linearity is very good but not as perfect as I like it to be:
I like to see deviation below 0.5 dB at -120 dB (20 bits) on the left side of the graph. Instead we have a bit more than double that in one channel. It also gets chewed up a bit early for a high-performance DAC.
Good news comes in the form of broadband distortion+noise relative to frequency:
As noted, this requires good control of noise in ultrasonics together with lack of harmonic distortion as frequencies get higher.
Lastly, this is a zoomed response to white noise showing how well the reconstruction filter gets rid of out of band signals as required by digital audio theory (all content above 22.05 kHz/half the sampling rate of CD's 44.1 kHz needs to be eliminated):
We get nearly 100 dB of out of band rejection which is excellent. I have seen DACs that do far, far worse than that.
Conclusions
The Linn Akurate DSM is a very well engineered piece of hardware. It is impossible to find any design faults in it. The issue for audience that hangs around here is price versus performance. There, I would have wanted to see it reach to the maximum level of performance possible. The Akurate DSM falls just short of that. Fortunately that is how the product is spec'ed so no one should be surprised.
For people who buy high-end products and hence don't consider such a device "expensive," it is a very good choice in that it is not built on voodoo but real engineering. Those of you in UK may also have cost advantages versus importing products from elsewhere.
I am caught between a rock and a hard place as far as recommending or not recommending the Akurate DSM. I like to recommend it but falling short of superb performance keeps me from doing so given the high cost. So I let you determine thumbs up or down on your own.
-------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
They say you should save money for a rainy day. It rains for about 6 months here so I need plenty of money!!! Please consider donating funds using:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or
upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).
Linn is a Scottish company that has a long tradition/history among audiophiles although most of it earned through their legendary turntables than digital technology.
I had a lot of fun chatting with the owner of it so forgot to take a picture of it. Here is the stock photo from Linn's site:
The unit is quite substantial and with luxury feel.
Due to shortness of time, I did not have a chance to play much with its functionality. I was pleased that it supported Roon Endpoint and I could stream full 24-bit, high sample rate content to it with equal performance to its S/PDIF input which I used for testing.
Why S/PDIF input? Oddly there is no USB input on Linn Akurate DSM. So no way to use it as a USB DAC unless you buy a USB to S/PDIF bridge.
We downloaded their app for Windows to control it since we didn't have the remote. The Akurate DSM comes with Linn's interesting room EQ which does NOT rely on measurements. The owner had configured it such and we had to turn that off for testing.
For streaming functionality you need to download their app naturally to your favorite device. I personally am not a fan of such functionality. I don't believe that each one of these companies can keep up with likes of Roon in having a fully functional, rich and ever evolving and stable app. So that functionality is lost on me.
There are tons of inputs and outputs on the unit as it can be used as a pre-amp. In the interest of time, I only tested the unit as a DAC by feeding it S/PDIF and measuring its balanced output. Let's see how she performed.
Measurements
As usual, we start with our dashboard view:
The Akurate DSK checks the right boxes with 4 volt output.
On performance, it sets a new precedence by easily exceeding its stated spec! Distortion is far lower than 0.002%, clocking almost an order of magnitude lower at 0.0003%. Perhaps they use a wider bandwidth when measuring THD+N than I use (22.4 kHz). Regardless, it is a pleasure to see such conservative rating.
This puts the Linn Akurate DSM at the top of our performance quadrants:
They have announced a new generation of their DACs which higher performance so maybe those will grab the crown of the best DAC we have tested. For now, it falls a bit short of the best of the best which one would expect at this price point.
Switching to dynamic range, we see the same trend of honest reporting:
Right on the money.
Intermodulation distortion is not rated and unfortunately disappoints in noise department:
But nicely makes up for it in having no distortion at max level (no upward trend in the graph).
Linearity is very good but not as perfect as I like it to be:
I like to see deviation below 0.5 dB at -120 dB (20 bits) on the left side of the graph. Instead we have a bit more than double that in one channel. It also gets chewed up a bit early for a high-performance DAC.
Good news comes in the form of broadband distortion+noise relative to frequency:
As noted, this requires good control of noise in ultrasonics together with lack of harmonic distortion as frequencies get higher.
Lastly, this is a zoomed response to white noise showing how well the reconstruction filter gets rid of out of band signals as required by digital audio theory (all content above 22.05 kHz/half the sampling rate of CD's 44.1 kHz needs to be eliminated):
We get nearly 100 dB of out of band rejection which is excellent. I have seen DACs that do far, far worse than that.
Conclusions
The Linn Akurate DSM is a very well engineered piece of hardware. It is impossible to find any design faults in it. The issue for audience that hangs around here is price versus performance. There, I would have wanted to see it reach to the maximum level of performance possible. The Akurate DSM falls just short of that. Fortunately that is how the product is spec'ed so no one should be surprised.
For people who buy high-end products and hence don't consider such a device "expensive," it is a very good choice in that it is not built on voodoo but real engineering. Those of you in UK may also have cost advantages versus importing products from elsewhere.
I am caught between a rock and a hard place as far as recommending or not recommending the Akurate DSM. I like to recommend it but falling short of superb performance keeps me from doing so given the high cost. So I let you determine thumbs up or down on your own.
-------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
They say you should save money for a rainy day. It rains for about 6 months here so I need plenty of money!!! Please consider donating funds using:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or
upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).
