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Modern English’s "Black Houses" had me excited again by the combo’s unbelievable speed and dynamic verve. For one, the snare drum tuned unusually low pummeled my gut with real aggression. For two, the pent-up anger of the musicians flooded the room with real rancour and zero attempt at any civilizing prettification. Immediacy would become one of my go-to descriptors for the Lindemänner; perchance even unmitigated directness.
Here I must come clean. My Neat Acoustics Momentum 4i reference speakers aren’t exactly tame on top. Quite the opposite. Hence I eventually reached a juncture where their trait conflicted with the Lindemann sound. Pianist Khatia Buniatishvili on her Motherland album covers Liszt’s "Wiegenlied" lullaby as a—duh!—very subdued gentle number.

Pretty soon I found myself nearly exclusively focused on the rising and falling noises of her damper pedal which the pianist engages extensively. This production is quite transparent. Hence with a CD player, power amp and speaker of which none soften the treble, precision can become just a bit much. One can counter this with setup—toe out the speakers a bit—and it wasn’t really a matter of the German duo but my complete chain. What I mean to say is, don’t be shy to combine these components with boxes that don’t polish the high registers to an extra gloss.

I subsequently direct-connected the network player to my Abacus Ampollo power amp. The first difference was nearly absurd. At €2’900 the Ampollo is one of the faster amps around. Yet compared to the Lindemann it acted nearly sedate – more chilled down, dynamically not as on the offensive and a bit softer on top. This built up its aural scenery from the bass and lower mids. In those bands the Ampollo played it juicier and with more weight but also less attack vigour than the Lindemann power amp. In the treble I thought it captured cymbal textures—particularly those of a ride cymbal—with a tad more precision whilst ultimately not as illuminated. Perhaps this turn of phrase captures it best: the Ampollo drew the treble a bit darker if also with more contrast and colour.


Another difference I keyed into was that for soundstaging, the Abacus was the more coherent regardless of SPL. This stayed put also with Lindemann’s network player. With its own stable mate, very low levels weren’t as persuasive. Whilst it deserves mention because I did observe it, I must also qualify its unlikelihood that it'll matter to most. That’s because compaction of the stage only occurred below ‘25’ on the dial, with room levels being ‘40’. Finally I checked out the musicbook:50 with my reference kit, i.e. the analog output of my CD/DAC/pre Audiolab 8200CDQ; and a B.M.C.’s PureDac feed which itself got Redbook digital from the Audiolab. The results were as expected. The Audiolab was softer, gentler and more rotund; the B.M.C. brisker, wirier and better sorted with imaging. This proved how despite its involving personality, the Lindemann power amp was sufficiently translucent to transmit the signature traits of its ancillaries without enforcing its own imprimatur on them.

It shouldn’t take much reading between the lines to realize that I was really smitten with my testers and in particular with the musicbook:25 network player. The reason is simple. To my ears it offered an added dose of audiophile subtlety over the amp. Leash the network deck to another amplifier (or use its very good headphone output instead), and you’ll notice how particularly in the treble but also in the presence region it is capable of more finesse and accuracy than the combo performance of 25 + 50 might have let on.


On soundstaging too the 25 worked it more cohesive and was less contingent on variables like playback levels or recorded density. This rose to the fore with complex orchestral music. With the "Largo" of Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony, an English horn introduces the glorious theme. After the intro the English horn vanishes and the orchestra and particularly its strings indulge in slowly fading circular melodic lines. This signature goose-bump moment relies on its intensity for a good deal on the intimate interplay between violins and violas. The Lindemann 25 handled this very intelligibly, both by differentiating the dissimilar timbres of the string sections as well as their localization. This was true on both the matching amp and the Abacus. Yet the latter was more relaxed and at ease – without pricked-up ears if you will.