Decades ago, when I was peddling million-dollar sound systems, an astute potential customer asked me: “If I buy your very expensive system, what will I get that I’m not getting with my less expensive system?” Smiling my best fatherly smile, I whispered to his ear, “Goosebumps, tears, and laughter.”

With a slightly worried look, he asked, “How much did you say those silver cables cost?”

Thirty years later

Changing audio cables always changes the sound of my system, sometimes a lot but usually just a little. Typically, the sonic effects of cable changes are modest shifts in focus, tone, or transparency. But sometimes during blue moons I’ve seen a new set of cables turn a blah, dull, fuzzy system into a macrodynamic, microdetailed one. Or turn a cool, mechanical-sounding system into something fierce and mammalian.

I would never blame an audiophile for thinking that specialty audio cables sound mostly the same and that buying expensive wires would be foolish. That view is justifiable because it reflects most audiophiles’ experience. I felt that way myself until one day in the 1980s I went off-piste and experienced my first silver-wire cables from Kimber Kable.

Ray Kimber, who I met somehow through the Audio Amateur magazine crowd, called to suggest I try a loom of his new braided silver wire. His cables turned my well-behaved, even-keeled system into a macrodynamic, microdetailed fantasia. No wolves or mammoths appeared, but the clouds vanished, and the sun came out.

Before that silver sun came out, my system was wired with various gauges of generic Mouser “hookup wire,” which I had discovered by using it for point-to-point wiring in the amplifiers I was building. Mouser’s stranded polyvinyl-coated copper did not appear to stifle or grossly pollute signal currents, so I began fashioning all my interconnects and speaker cables from it, in my preferred colors, with Switchcraft connectors.

Changing from Mouser copper to Kimber silver interconnects and speaker cables threw a brighter, purer light on every recording. Atmospherics and the specters of performers became a more prominent part of the listening experience. Equally noticeable was how silver added something akin to a shimmering halo around the stereo apparition. I found these enhancements appealing and worth the extra cost.

A few years later, I switched to hair-thin, hand-drawn Italian silver wire from Audio Note Japan (now Kondo). Those wires, which were made entirely in-house, took data retrieval to an extreme level that forced me to coin a new descriptor—”LSD-spiderweb”—which referred to the surfeit of detail I experienced. Changing from almost-free copper to Kimber and Kondo silver was like switching from aspirin to windowpane acid provided by Owsley Stanley III. I tried those top-shelf silver cables with middle- and bottom-shelf components and discovered that their effect was pretty negligible with the bottom-row stuff but sometimes dramatically effective at upping the excitement factor of midlevel components. As a result, I have no qualms about using $4000 interconnects with a $2000 integrated amplifier.

I’ve been experimenting with wires since the 1970s, yet I have never experienced a compelling, frisson-inducing system at any price level that had not been carefully cable-curated.

IKIGAI Audio Kangai-level cables

Forty years later, during the summer of ’23, a musician/audio dealer friend named Steve Davis (currently of Analog Matters, an importation and distribution firm located in Ormond Beach, Florida) sent me a loom of Kangai-level wires from Dutch manufacturer IKIGAI and urged me to try them “quick, just for fun” before he took them to an audio show. The last time Steve asked me to try a product, it was the Falcon LS3/5a, which I reviewed in 2015 and bought immediately. Because Steve has famously good taste and waited eight years to send me another product, I decided to give his IKIGAI wires a try (footnote 1).

A pair of 0.75m Kangai-level interconnects costs $3610, and a 2m speaker cable pair is $9400. Which means that “just for fun,” I wired my floor system with approximately $20,000 worth of 5N silver/24kt gold conductors. I was eager to see what these thin, flexible, well-constructed cables would do to the sound of my system, which had been carefully curated with Cardas and AudioQuest wire.

The Japanese word “IKIGAI” translates loosely to “reason for being,” which suggests that their designer-manufacturer—Jeffrey Dam, in the Netherlands—is either exploiting Japanese philosophy and aesthetics for marketing purposes (possibly a good idea) or abusing hyperbole (as all manufacturers have a right to do). Either way, it’s obvious that Jeffrey Dam feels confident in what he has created and builds with his own hands.

IKIGAI cables are offered at three levels. The entry level is called Sugure (Japanese for “excellent”), which is all stranded 5N silver fitted with ETI Research connectors. (IKIGAI’s DIN Phono and BNC connectors are made by Furutech.) The midlevel IKIGAI, which I tried, is called Kangai, which means “emotion.” Kangai adds more strands, some in 24-karat gold, and a more complex strand-weave armature. IKIGAI’s highest-level cable is named Kinzan (gold); it adds more strands, more varieties of stranding, and TIG-welded connections.

Before I seriously engage with any cable product, I need to know that it is thin, compliant, and gentle on my components’ rear panels. If it lays neatly and does not attract dust bunnies, I fall in love. If it recovers above-average amounts of raw energy from a file or disc, I contemplate a long-term relationship.

IKIGAI’s Kangai-level wires passed all those tests, but most notably and uniquely, they put a fun, frolicking dynamic charge on every sound coming from my speakers. They made lesser cables seem drowsy and constrained. The Kangai-level IKIGAIs brought to my system a fresh-air clarity and a “Lights, camera, action!” vibe that equaled or exceeded AudioQuest’s Thunderbird, which specializes in those things.

But the IKIGAI’s way was gentler. Its temper was more relaxed than that of the AudioQuest and more ethereal than a full loom of Cardas Clear Beyond, which, in striking contrast, keeps its bare feet planted in black soil under a yellow sun. In my system, Cardas Clear Beyond makes its best magic in the mid- and lower frequencies. IKIGAI’s Kangai-level cables made their best magic in the mid- and high frequencies, where their exceptional delicacy made opera, choral, and orchestral recordings extra pleasurable.

The main thing that separated the Kangai-level IKIGAI cables from others I know, however, was how much charged, scintillating energy they wrung out of recordings. If your system leans toward cloudy or drowsy (which my systems rarely do), IKIGAI wires might elevate vivo and transparency.

The dCS Lina headphone amplifier

Established in 1987, dCS is a British company (footnote 2) that today projects a products-for-the-educated-class aura similar to the ones Linn and Naim have projected since the 1970s. Linn and Naim became famous for making analog products then later mastered digital. For nigh on 36 years, dCS has been widely respected for the sonics and engineering quality of its digital products. While it’s part of a suite of products that includes digital parts—a DAC and a clock—this dCS Lina headphone amplifier is dCS’s first all-analog amplification product.

The luxuriously matte-black Lina retails for $9750 and is designed to be part of a trio of matching components. The others are the Lina 2.0 Network DAC ($13,650) and its associated Master Clock ($7750). When used together, these components make up a three-tier, monolithic stack of serious-looking black boxes that weigh almost 50lb and that, purchased together, cost $31,150. dCS seems to have created this iconic-looking black monolith to further establish their brand in the global community of headphone aficionados. Walking around CanJam NYC 2023, it was easy to spot these unique, triple-decker monoliths from across the room. In use, it felt like an end-game headphone system. For this column, I listened only to the headphone amp and not to the DAC/Master Clock combination.

According to the published specifications (footnote 3), the Lina amplifier is a solid state, class-AB design capable of delivering 2W into 30 ohms or 0.48W into 300 ohms with balanced ‘phones, or 1.6W into 30 ohms and 0.2W into 300 ohms with unbalanced. dCS doesn’t specify the Lina’s gain, which can be switched between Low and High from the front panel. Low is for sensitive, easy-to-drive headphones and IEMs.

High, on the other hand, is for difficult-to-drive headphones, including such planar magnetics as the 47 ohm, 89dB-sensitive Abyss or HiFiMan’s 80 ohm, 83dB-sensitive Susvara. According to the section labeled “Drive” on the dCS website (footnote 4), “The Lina amplifier’s design is optimized for 60 ohms, as that is where the headphones on the difficult to drive end of the spectrum sit.”

dCS says that the Lina amplifier will drive “the full 14VRMS”—RMS is for root-mean-square, which you can think of as the average voltage output; the peak output voltage will be higher than this by a factor of about 1.4—into impedances as low as 45 ohms, to ensure that headphones that require voltage are adequately driven. “The Lina Headphone Amplifier employs a topology that is sometimes called Super Class A or Class AA. This allows the amplifier to drive an impressive maximum of 4.5W per channel continuous into 45 ohms, while maintaining the excellent linearity typically associated with a Class A amplifier,” John Giolas, VP sales and marketing at dCS, told me in an email.

“Like the rest of the dCS range, the Lina Headphone Amplifier uses a hybrid power supply. It features a toroidal mains transformer. This is then followed by switch-mode power supply elements, which work well at supplying the consistent DC voltage the circuitry inside the amplifier requires. The only flying lead connection inside the unit is from the transformer to the power supply circuitry—everything else is contained on the single flex rigid circuit board.”

The Lina headphone amp includes three analog inputs: one stereo pair of unbalanced RCA, with an input impedance of 48k ohms; one stereo pair of buffered (high-impedance) balanced XLR; and one stereo pair of “unbuffered” balanced XLR for use with low-impedance source components including the Lina DAC. The unbuffered input utilizes shunt feedback to reduce common-mode distortion.

On the front panel are three headphone outputs: two 3-pin XLR—one each for right and left channels, plus one 4-pin XLR—and one 0.25″ (6.35mm) headphone jack.

Tools for fun: My plan for this Lina report was to keep my listening system stable and reproducible by others. That meant using Denafrips’s Terminator Plus DAC feeding AudioQuest’s Thunderbird interconnects, alternating with the HoloAudio’s Spring 3 DAC connected with Cardas’s Clear Beyonds.

Footnote 1: JD Ikigai, Lorentzstraat 75, Roosendaal, The Netherlands. Tel: +31 (0) 620626025. Email: info@ikigai-audio.com. Web: ikigai-audio.com. US distributor: Analog Matters/Big Ear Consulting LLC, 1453 Rt US 1 North, Unit 32, Ormond Beach, Florida. Tel: (800) 752-4018. Email: analogmatters1@gmail.com. Web: analogmatters.com.

Footnote 2: Data Conversion Systems, Ltd., Unit 1, Buckingway Business Park, Anderson Rd., Swavesey, Cambridge CB24 4AE, England, UK. US distributor: Data Conversion Systems Americas, LLC, PNC Bank Bldg., 300 Delaware Ave., Suite 210, Wilmington, DE 19801. Tel: (302) 473-9050. Web: dcsaudio.com

Footnote 3: See lina.dcsaudio.com/products/lina-amplifier and moon-audio.com/dcs-lina-headphone-amplifier.html.

Footnote 4: See dcsaudio.com/edit/lina_amp_drive.

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