Channel D Lino C vs. Sutherland Little Loco

So I gather the Lino C depends upon a $50, non-rechargeable battery??? That's not much compared to the cost of the unit, but on the other hand what would put me off is running out of juice at a critical moment or a subtle effect on performance as the battery charge wanes but not sufficiently to trigger a warning light, if such exists.

@lewn There is a self charging mechanism in the Lino C 2.2. The unit kicks into charging mode after ten minutes of not receiving an audio signal. A fully charged battery takes several hours and should be good for 20 hours of listening, so really no need for a warning trigger.

The previous interchange regarding the battery led me to believe that maybe it was not re-chargeable, which did not make sense.  Thanks for the clarification.

I have become very interested in the Lino C phono pre after reading through this thread. I see from the Lino website that they do not incorporate DC blocking caps in their designs. Is that standard practice for phono pre's not to use blocking caps or could that be an area for potential problems?

No it’s not “standard”. If there’s DC offset, it is generally blocked with a capacitor, but it’s possible to design especially a solid state preamp so there is no dc offset. Another method is to use a servo to cancel DC at the output. It’s always considered good practice to eliminate DC at the output one way or another.