Leema Acoustics products range from the classic award-winning Constellation series, new remarkable Stellar series, sleek half-size Element series and the small but premium-grade discrete Essential add-on series; all of which are complimented by Leema's high-end handbuilt cables.

Leema was founded in 1998 by ex-BBC engineers Lee Taylor and Mallory Nicholls who wanted to explore their keen interest in audio reproduction. The began by focusing on pushing the limits of loudspeaker design to create a miniature loudspeaker able to outperform much-larger systems.

The available design principles and algorithms at the time were unable to bring this vision to life, so Taylor and Nicholls embarked on four years of extensive work accumulating in a micro monitor of unprecedented technical and musical excellence which they named Xen. It was initially only available to the professional audio market but as audiophiles learnt of the quality of Leema products, Xen moved into the domestic market.

Following this success and inspired by the overwhelming reception, they shifted their expertise to additional speakers and complementary audio electronic components resulting in the release of the Tucana integrated amplifier in 2006 which won the coveted HiFi News "amplifier of the year award" a few months later. The Antila CD player followed soon after and almost immediately swooped up the prestigious "What Hi-Fi? Sound & Vision best CD player" award in 2007.

To date, Leema Acoustic's industry-leading products has expanded to include the Reference, Elements and more recently the Essentials range. These products continue to accumulate global acclaim, “best in class” reviews and countless prominent awards.

In 2007, Leema formed a partnership with a local Welsh manufacturer Davlec to supply an increasingly high demand. Established in 1983, Davlec originally designed and manufactured electronics for the Dairy industry. In 2014 Davlec and Leema joined forces to bring together decades of experience from the production and design teams and over 30 years of manufacturing expertise to continue to produce top-standard audio products.

Storing your music digitally, on a computer, laptop or NAS drive is now an incredibly viable and easy way of enjoying hi-fi quality sound, particularly with the prevalence of high quality FLAC and lossless files available. Using a good quality DAC can really make such digital audio sources an incredible way of enjoying your music, and in the case of high resolution files, can be essential to enjoy them at their full resolution and bit depth. With many high resolution files now exceeding the quality of CD, a quality DAC capable of playing such files enables you to enjoy stunning high-fidelity audio.

Many DACs offer a range of digital inputs, typically optical and coaxial, while some also feature USB functionality. Each input may have different capabilities in terms of the bit depth and resolution it is capable of playing. If you are looking to play particularly high resolution files via a certain input it is worth checking that the prospective DAC is able to play these. Some models will only offer 24bit/96kHz over some inputs, meaning that 24bit/192kHz files would not be able to play at their full rate. This only effects the highest quality downloads and audio files, and anything ripped from a CD will be stored in 16bit/44kHz, which most, if not all DACs are capable of playing.

When using your DAC via USB, many models now offer asynchronous USB connection. Unlike with a CD Transport, an asynchronous USB connection allows for the DAC itself to control the clock speed of the digital connection, which dramatically reduces jitter and ensures a high quality signal and sound. If you intend to use your computer or laptop as an audio source, asynchronous USB is definitely something to look out for. While many models feature a USB input, if the model you're looking at doesn't have this feature, you'll also need a USB to S/PDIF Converter if you want to use your computer via USB. This will convert the digital signal from your computer’s USB, and enable you to connect to the optical or coaxial input.

Once the DAC has converted the digital audio, it is outputted as an analogue signal, typically via RCA phono outputs which can then be connected to a pre amplifier or integrated amplifier. Some models offer alternative outputs, such as Balanced XLR which increase the range of connectivity options as well as the range of products which can be used.