Leema Elements DAC

I purchased the Leema Elements along with a Logitech Squeezebox Touch (one of the last ones as these great devices are now out of production).

The two items are connected with a digital coax cable, and a pair of Ruark Prologue II speakers and a Rel sub-bass. The Leema and Squeezebox replace a Linn Classik with which I've been pretty happy for about 10 years.

The Leema sounds superb. The sound is dynamic, strong, musical. There's plenty of detail. The bass is warm an has plenty of extension. There's huge volume if you have understanding neighbours.

Playing a wide range of music, from classical to rock and pop, you can see great detail in the music, almost three dimensional. Voices are clear and have strong presence. Yet the sound is always musical, not too analytical. (Admittedly the speakers are "sweet", not quite as precise as say B&Ws which I feel can be a bit metallic).

I have tried to understand this "timing" issue that What Hifi seems to take issue with, but really cannot detect any such problem at all. I feel this is an unfair criticism of this great UK-made bit of kit.

I would agree that the menu is a little quirky, it reminds me of programming simple microprocessors in the 80's. But for me, I just set the display to time-out after 30 seconds, and control your volume from the Squeezebox! I never touch the Leema (haven't even used the remote). But there of course is a nice volume knob if you want to control it by hand, which has a soft bumpiness as you rotate it.

This is a great bit of kit of the money (I got an ex-demonstrator from Sevenoaks Hifi for just under £1,000), and it's brilliant to have all this in one compact box, it looks like it will be me for a while now.