Linn Owners

Should Linn return to making an analogue AV pre-amp?

hodge555

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If my Kinos dies then up to recently my Linn replacement option was a ASH with a surround chip plus an Akurate Ekaktbox 6 at a cost of nearly 11k GBP. Now these 2 boxes have been discontinued so it would be either a Klimax system for a LOT more money or a Selekt setup of some sort.

Both are a move away from an analogue system to a digitally processed one. I'm not sure I'm happy about this.

When source is the key was born we were instilled with a top down ideal. Then the primary was the LP12 following in importance by the pre-amp, then power amps and finally the speakers.

Now Linn want to take the LP12 analogue vinyl source and digitise it immediately, then send it through the Sound Optimisation software and then out to speakers with amps built in.

I always distrusted the concept of needing a graphic equaliser and to my mind Sound Optimisation is essentially such an equaliser.

Now does this new Linn kit sound bad, no of course it doesn't, it sounds very good but I'm just not happy about the manipulation of the source material.

I guess I'm missing that Linn no longer make analogue pre-amps and I might need to look elsewhere next time, or get another Kinos or Kisto.


Discuss.
 

heimo

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As all surround source media and devices are digital by nature, I see no reason not to process them digitally all the way up until the speaker. In Linn terms, this means a full blown Exakt setup with only your budget determining the level.

As for the LP12, I myself still believe in an entirely analog signal chain, which of course rules out Exakt and all DSM devices except for the original ("/0") Akurate DSM. Linn does not share this belief, so either I convert or I leave the church of Linn.
 

Mr Kandid

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Never going to happen that boat has sailed.
I only have my deck now all else is Naim and Kudos. (y)
 

audio_PHIL_e

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leave the church of Linn.
I never joined it, other than to invest in what I thought was the "best" TT for the £ at the time. All the amplification is valve-driven which Linn don't do anyway.

I disagree with the "everything in 1 box" ideology now, for similar reasons as I disagreed with "music centres" and similar products when they were popular.
 

entdgc

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I always distrusted the concept of needing a graphic equaliser and to my mind Sound Optimisation is essentially such an equaliser.
If you play a music system in Room A then play it in (a different) Room B it will sound different. So the room is acting as a 'graphic (un)equaliser'. All SO does is attempt to correct for that at specific frequencies to give you back the original intended sound. Admittedly it is not perfect but from my experience with certain speakers it is essential. Of course YMMV.
 

ThomasOK

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If you play a music system in Room A then play it in (a different) Room B it will sound different. So the room is acting as a 'graphic (un)equaliser'. All SO does is attempt to correct for that at specific frequencies to give you back the original intended sound. Admittedly it is not perfect but from my experience with certain speakers it is essential. Of course YMMV.
That is one way to look at it. But if you are talking to someone as you walk from room to room, or even outside, your voice will sound essentially the same to them - even though a recording will show vast differences. This is due to the ears/brain automatically adjusting for the environment they are in. So if you "equalize" the room to some supposed ideal while your ears/brain are already compensating for the room you are double compensating and your ears/brain will find it sounds unnatural. At least mine and those of a number of others do.

Obviously if you have a really bad room, a cube, a dome, a bathroom, you will have problems that the ears/brain will not be able to overcome and some help might be useful. But the best help will be to put the system into a decent room as the digital tricks are still questionable. Some room treatment may also be possible in problem rooms but overall I am not a big fan of those either.

As to the original question, there is no such thing as an analog AV preamp as all current video formats are digital signals. So digital processing is necessary to handle Dolby Atmos, DTS X and the various other surround formats. However, I do sympathize with the desire for it to be all analog once those signals are converted as I still haven't found a DVC that is as musical as a good analog preamp. Also I am of the belief that the idea that keeping the signal digital as it goes through various transformations because it is "lossless" is pure hogwash from a musical standpoint. My experience is that the more transformations the digital signal goes through the more likely music will be lost and every part of the chain can make a musical change to the music - even supposedly passive things like Ethernet cables and network switches. So a system that has the signal analog as much as possible is the way I prefer things. My main system has a Lejonklou Källa Streamer/DAC and a full Klimax LP12, both of which I find very musical although the LP12 is still the best. But they are both run through Lejonklou Sagatun Mono preamps and Tundra Mono power amps so it is all analog from there on. My home theater system is in need of a couple upgrades but I plan to get a Panasonic 4K BluRay player that has the surround decoding built in. That will feed my Akurate Kontrol 5.1 channel preamp analog inputs and be analog from that point on as well. Since Linn is exceedingly unlikely to go back to analog preamps I also have to hope the AK holds up for as long as I need it. Otherwise it would indeed be time to look for another brand.
 

Ben Webster

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Digital is not bad. I‘m surprised how Digital music improved in the last years. Linn made a big step in the right direction with Katalyst and Organik. And there are a lot of manufacturers who delivered fantastic digtial music reproduction systems.

What I don‘t like is digital volume control (even Linn improved it in the last years).

And what I really don‘t like are analog/digital equalizer. You can convert booming music to non-booming sound … but not to enjoyable music, sorry. Yes, I know, there are a lot of SO fans here, but more and more accept SO as a compromis. And some of them switched SO off…
 
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entdgc

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That is one way to look at it. But if you are talking to someone as you walk from room to room, or even outside, your voice will sound essentially the same to them - even though a recording will show vast differences. This is due to the ears/brain automatically adjusting for the environment they are in.
I am not sure this is a fair analogy. Human voices have a relatively narrow frequency range. SO only works below 100Hz - I doubt many voices have strong content in this frequency range. But I agree the human brain is a marvellous design and allows us to cope with lots of difficult situations. SO is not the ideal solution - room treatment, and building an ideal listening room would be much better - but most people live in the real world with families and budgetary restrictions to accommodate so SO is IMHO a viable alternative.
 

hodge555

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I should clarify that like a lot of people I don't have the luxury of having a dedicated AV room hence my lounge needs to share AV use with LP12 use, through some of the same speakers and amps.
Maybe I'm just old here but I'd like to keep everything analogue for my LP12.
AV is a digital source as @ThomasOK mentions which in my case is converted to analogue at source via my Oppo 203 using it's internal DAC and then using analogue 5.1 out into my Kinos which has analogue 5.1 in.

Maybe I'm lucky but my lounge is rectangular with a carpeted concrete floor and I've not yet felt the need to compensate for it.
 
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Nestor Turton

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I found despite it digitising my gramophone record replay Urika II combined with Space Optimisation made everything more musical and enjoyable - closer to the original studio master

So give me Love, give me Can, give me Hammill
Give me Tarkus, give me Marquee Moon
Michael Ball or The Fall
I could listen to them all
When I'm Space Optimised in my room
Irk the purists, Irk the purists
Irk the purists, It’s right good crack
Irk the purists, Irk the purists
Irk the purists at the back
Carla Bley, random Goth, Shirley Collins
Basia Bulat, Small Faces, Mother Gong
Be it false or for real, SO2 makes music appeal
As we listen to our favourite song
Irk the purists, Irk the purists
It could well be an Olympic sport
Irk the purists, Irk the purists
If you’ve never, then you ought
- From the album Trouble Over Bridgwater
 
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ThomasOK

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On soft gray mornings widows cry
The wise men share a joke
I run to grasp divining signs
To satisfy the hoax
The yellow jester does not play
But gently pulls the strings
And smiles as the puppets dance
In the court of the crimson king
 

Nestor Turton

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This discussion is getting a bit weird :)
I may be hungry, but I sure ain’t weird” - Captain Beefheart

I never understood why they dropped bass and treble adjustments on amplifiers as these could prove useful in many rooms. SO is much more though, it is not really ye olde graphic equaliser with lots of impressive slider controls, but a sophisticated parametric equal equaliser. JRiver, Audirvana, Roon and other software can apply parametric equalisation, but IME (never tried Roon) these are not as effective as SO2.

However, for those who wish to stay analogue then there is always Loki

1670496868863.png
1670496920914.png
1670496958977.png

Loki has six 31-step precision relay potentiometers with 0.5% thin film resistors and 60 relays and custom firmware for 15 EQ settings either side of each knob at 20Hz, 120Hz, 400Hz, 2kHz, 6kHz and 16kHz. Every stage uses dual-stage super-buffers and balanced summers to the current-feedback gain stage (no idea what that means, but it impressed me) and balanced output. Stages are fed by a 4-stage power supply with two rail levels up to +/-32V to give the large output voltage swing necessary for lots of gain. Designed, assembled and tested by Schiit Audio in Valencia, California with transformers and chokes from North California and PCBs from Simi Valley.

I have used the much simpler Loki mini (not with Linn gear) and it works a treat. Of course, purists hate it, but I just want to grove to the music.

So no I don't think we'll ever see another analogue amp from Linn, but there are fascinating designs from Schiit, Chord and Quad that may be of interest.
 
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Wenge1

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Each to their own - Enjoy what you have and get on with playing some tunes. I think we have all, at some point (especially me) spent a bit too much time justifying our decisions and maybe temporarily 'forgot' the primary reason for having them in the first place.

Mind you, there has been cracking posts on this thread that have been written in a well concieved and humerous fashion ............ (y)
 

akamatsu

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Linn's ethos is to minimize the loss of musical information. If converting to digital then back to analogue achieves this, then so be it, I say. When Exakt was first introduced, I was against it, as I held to my analogue purity beliefs. My more recent experience says less loss of musical information results in more music.
 

Dasher

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I share the OP's concern. I have no desire to move on my Kisto - as a pre amp it is simply stunning. If and when it dies then I shall bring down the spare that is stored in the loft and carry on as normal! When that one goes then I suspect that I'll be entering the world of pre-owned Akurate kit. Sadly though, it isn't the 'analogue' bit that I will have a problem with but the sheer flexibility of the Kisto. Two tape out (which I use for the Kisto and the Nak) will be missed. I'd go used Klimax but that has even less inputs. The big thing that the Kisto does for me though is takes 5.1 analogue audio from the Unidisk - and that is how I play my substantial SACD collection. I rate SACD highly - way above Qobuz streaming. Life moves on, and I will eventually move with it - but not until I'm forced to!
 

Dasher

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Looks like the modern equivalent to the Kisto would be a Selekt DSM configured for 5.1 surround with analogue outputs. It can be expanded to 7.1 with the addition of an Exaktbox.

https://docs.linn.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Surround_Sound
Whilst the Selekt does have more flexibility than Linn's offerings of late, SQ wise the modern equivalent to a Kisto is almost certainly a Klimax. My Kisto / KDS/1 (non Kat) is still a formidable performer. As pre amps the Kisto and KK are/were very close in terms of performance. I listened to the NAD Master Series AV Processor at the weekend - it's good.- and a contender
 

Paulssurround

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If my Kinos dies then up to recently my Linn replacement option was a ASH with a surround chip plus an Akurate Ekaktbox 6 at a cost of nearly 11k GBP. Now these 2 boxes have been discontinued so it would be either a Klimax system for a LOT more money or a Selekt setup of some sort.

Both are a move away from an analogue system to a digitally processed one. I'm not sure I'm happy about this.

When source is the key was born we were instilled with a top down ideal. Then the primary was the LP12 following in importance by the pre-amp, then power amps and finally the speakers.

Now Linn want to take the LP12 analogue vinyl source and digitise it immediately, then send it through the Sound Optimisation software and then out to speakers with amps built in.

I always distrusted the concept of needing a graphic equaliser and to my mind Sound Optimisation is essentially such an equaliser.

Now does this new Linn kit sound bad, no of course it doesn't, it sounds very good but I'm just not happy about the manipulation of the source material.

I guess I'm missing that Linn no longer make analogue pre-amps and I might need to look elsewhere next time, or get another Kinos or Kisto.


Discuss.
Interesting thread

It would be incredibly expensive for Linn to develop a new release surround processor again such as the Kinos. The research and development costs have sunk many companies that attempted that.

I have a Linn Exakt surround system, which provides a level of 5.1 music that is astonishing, but the costs have been significant.

Last time I checked, Linn was using an Anthem A/V surround processor for their Home theatre demos.

As mentioned by others, Space Optimisation is not a graphic equalizer. With SOv1, the 4 custom filters allowed you to adjust the frequencies, bandwidth and gain to such a fine degree that I was able to change the tonal quality of the music to customize it to the room acoustics. The effects of the adjustments go well above 80 Hz and effected the mids and highs as well as frequencies below 80 Hz.
 
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