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From: rdg@hpfcla.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.audio
Subject: Linn-Naim Seminar (long)
Message-ID: <13100006@hpfcla.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 6-Mar-84 13:37:00 EST
Article-I.D.: hpfcla.13100006
Posted: Tue Mar  6 13:37:00 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 10-Mar-84 09:58:30 EST
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Fort Collins Systems Division - Fort Collins, CO
Lines: 205
Nf-ID: #N:hpfcla:13100006:000:11401
Nf-From: hpfcla!rdg    Mar  6 10:37:00 1984

------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
	      The Infamous LINN Music Demonstration
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Saturday,  March 3, a group of  'Audiophiles'  gathered at one 'Audio
Alternative,' a 'high-end' Audio shop here in Fort Collins, Colorado, to
witness and participate in the final seminar on Linn-Naim Audio Systems.
The seminar was given by distributor Casey McKee of Audiophile  Systems.

The demonstration consisted of several parts:  comparing the Linn-Sondek
Turntable with Basik Arm to the  Rega-Planar-3  with Rega arm; Listening
to the  effects of having an extra  speaker in the room; The  effects of
not having the speakers  braced  properly;  The effects of a resting the
table on a large mass;  Comparing  LP's to CD's; All  interspersed  with
commentary  on the part of Casey  McKee  and  listener  viewpoints.  The
tests were all open, that is, no blindfolding of any kind.

1.  Linn vs  Rega.  Most of the  audience  (who  were  undoubtedly  Linn
owners)  preferred  the  Linn  for  some  reason  or  another.  Usually,
something  like "well, the Rega sounded  discontinuous,  uh, it made the
music hard to follow, while the Linn sounded like real music."  First of
all, neither  sounded like real music, and my personal  opinion was that
these differences were extremely subtle, if it existed at all, and I had
great  difficulty  hearing  things that others claimed were obvious.  In
particular,  Casey  played a  passage  from a Tony  Bennett  album,  and
several people heard  astonishing  differences,  while a few of us heard
none.  I really felt like saying  something  like 'with the Linn I could
hear the conductor  turning  pages' just to see if others would suddenly
think that they also heard it.  But I resisted the temptation.

2.  Extra  speaker in addition to the normal  stereo  pair.  Most people
thought that the change that occurred when the other speaker was brought
into the room was  incredible.  They  thought the sound was  muddier and
more  veiled.  This is how Casey  explained  it:  (paraphrase)

"Well, a speaker has a woofer and a tweeter,  so what else must it have?
Well, it has to have a  crossover.  Now, tell me, what's in a crossover?
Well, things like  resistors,  capacitors,  and...AHA!  Capacitors!  And
now what do  capacitors  do?  They store  charge.  The  active  speakers
excite the extra one, and cause the woofer to vibrate in  sympathy  with
the music.  Current is generated in the voice coil of the moving woofer,
and  this in turn  charges  up the  capacitors  in the  crossover.  They
charge for a little while, then they decide to discharge  whenever  they
damn well  please,  and  cause the  tweeter  to become  active  all of a
sudden,  generating  some sound that is not only greatly  distorted, but
way out of phase."

Linn claims to have measured the output of the passive  speaker to be as
much as 35 db below  the  output of the  active  speakers.  This too was
subtle,  though not so much as the turntable  business.  They claim that
other transducers will have a similar effect, though not as strong.  For
example,  telephones,  televisions,  clocks,  etc.  As a matter of fact,
they  requested that everybody  remove their digital  watches before the
demonstration,  and they  would hold on to them in the next room.  After
the demo, I asked Rick Dow  (hpfcla!rmd)  if he gave them his watch, and
he replied "No Way!" (So perhaps the whole demo was invalid...?)

3.  Speaker bracing.  This was the only truly convincing  demonstration.
Some  music was  played on the Linn,  then a penny was placed  under one
corner of one speaker, so the speaker could rock (that is, so it was not
stable.)  When the same passage of music was played  again, there really
were significant  differences:  the bass was loose and uncontrolled, and
image definition was generally  degraded, to mention a few.  Once again,
Casey  had some  elaborate  explaination  for  this.  He says  that Linn
measured  movements of the speaker case which were in excess of 50 times
the maximum tweeter excursion.

4.  Massive  base.  This was  interesting.  They played a passage,  then
placed a massive  block of metal  under the  turntable,  and played  the
passage  again.  Now, Casey didn't say which he thought would be better,
and  surprise!  Nobody in the audience had any opinions!  Note that they
also ignored the problems of levelling the table.

5.  LP vs CD.  The amount of bias present in this demonstration was even
greater than in the previous one, and almost unbearably so.  Some of the
things   played   were   passages   from  the   Police'   Synchronicity,
Rimsky-Korsakov's  Scheherazade  (the Kondrashin  recording on Philips),
Beethoven's  5th  Symphony,  some Toto, some  Foreigner and some Chopin.

The  Scheherazade  on LP sounded better to me than the CD.  Casey Played
the first minute or so from the second  movement,  where the solo violin
starts,  and the harp does a few  things.  On the LP, when the harp came
in, it  sounded  full,  and was  accompanied  with  substantial  ambient
warmth.  On the CD, the warmth was gone, the harp  sounded  thin, and it
had moved from stage left to  mid-right.  The violin  squealed in the CD
where it sung on the LP.  On the other hand, I didn't hear the  dramatic
differences some others heard on the Chopin or Police.  

To illustrate  the bias I am talking  about, here is a typical  piece of
dialogue which was repeated many times in some form or another:


Casey:    OK. What did you think of that comparison?
Person 1: The LP was very musical and the Digital sounded dead.
Casey:    Thank you. Does anyone else have any comments?
Person 2: The analog sounded like real music and the digital sounded
	  like shit.
Casey:    Great, anyone else?
Person 3: I thought the CD sounded much better than the LP.
Casey:    WHY?
Person 3: Well, there was more dynamic range, the bass was better, there
          was less distortion, there was no noise, and the speed was
          more accurate.
Casey:    CAN YOU BE MORE SPECIFIC ABOUT WHAT YOU LIKED BETTER?
Person 3: Well did you hear that bass drum? It was much tighter, and the
	  fundamental frequencies were much more present. How about the
	  voice? It sounded much more natural, with more accurate overtone
	  structure. The percussion was far more dynamic in general, and
	  there was no distortion when the loud note was hit at the end.
Casey:    WERE YOU AT THE STUDIO WHEN THAT ALBUM WAS RECORDED?
Person 3: No.
Casey:    So then how do you know what it is SUPPOSED to sound like? Perhaps
          the bass drum didn't have the kick you described at the original
          recording session, and the inaccuracies of the CD made it sound
          like that. Etc, etc...



Casey also always played the  supposedly  'better' item second, and this
did not impress me as unbiased demonstrating.

One of the  complaints  about the CD was that the music  seemed  to lack
liveliness  and  seemed  to drag as  compared  with the LP.  A  possible
explaination  for this (besides the usual "well that's  because  digital
sucks")  is that the LP is  slightly  faster  than  the CD, that is, its
speed accuracy is not perfect.  I found this in a personal comparison of
LP's vs CD's, and  several  people at the Linn demo  agreed  with  this.
Since the LP is faster,  the pitch is higher,  causing a brighter,  more
live  sound, and the pace is faster,  making the CD sound seem to 'drag'
or be dull.

Another point of interest is Casey McKee's  perverted as well as limited
knowledge of computers and how digital  audio works.  When asked why the
digitally  mastered  LP sounded  better  than the  corresponding  CD, he
offered  the  following  explaination:  The digital  master is made with
some system which is different than the CD's 16-bit/44.1khz  system, and
so the master has to be  re-digitized  or converted in some way into the
correct  format, while the LP requires only one step - digital to analog
conversion.  This is true of the  Telarcs  at  least - they  use a 48khz
sampling,  and then  convert  it somehow  to  44.1khz.  Casey  seemed to
suggest that they convert it to analog, then back to digital in order to
accomplish this  conversion!  I seriously doubt that this is what really
happens,  but there is more going on here than we are led to believe.  I
would be interested to know if anyone out there can conclusively confirm
or deny this, or has any  further  comments  or  information.  I do know
that the early digital  recordings  were made with a 48khz sampling rate
and various word sizes, but I thought that system was obsolete now.

Casey also  claims  that not only is the CD inferior to a  sophisticated
playback  system  such as the Linn, ANY  turntable  is capable of better
sound than the CD player.  I  disagree:  for all but a small  percentage
of stereo systems, I think the CD format would be an improvement.

He claimed that a good digital  reproduction system would require 24-bit
encoding  and  something  like a 200khz  sampling  rate.  Once  again, I
question the validity of this.  Assuming  that, he went on to state that
this system is not possible today because it would require 1800 times as
much storage as the current  system.  Is there anyone out there who does
not question his  arithmetic?  My  computations  show that it would need
about 7 times as much.  Where did he get 1800 from?  Well how about this
explaination:  200 / 44.1 = 4.54 and  4.54 * 1.5 (50%  more  bits) = 6.8
and 6.8 * 256 = 1741.5!!!!!  Amazingly  close to 1800!  I think he threw
in the 256 to account for the extra 8 bits!  He has an incredible  grasp
of digits - really inspires confidence!

On the other hand, he did have some good complaints about the CD format.
First, he thinks  that in two years  we'll  have a compact  disk that is
both readable and  writeable,  for a digital  recording  medium, and the
Japanese have no qualms about selling us something that will be obsolete
in 2 years.  He thinks the CD format will die  because of its high price
(now down to $400 for the  player,  but  holding at >$15 for disks)  and
limited software  availability (the obscure artists available on LP will
never be available  on CD format.  Velvet  Underground  is an example he
mentioned, whatever that is.)


Just to give you some  perspective on my  objectivity,  I will include a
description of my stereo system and preferences:

Audionics CC-2 Amp
Hafler DH-101 Preamp
Boston Acoustics A-100 Speakers
Nakamichi BX-150 Cassette Deck
Harmon-Kardon XM-300 Cassette Deck
Grado Signature 8 Pickup
Will be getting a Rega Planar-3 Turntable this week -
 just sold my Harmon-Kardon T-60

My musical  interests  are mainly  classical,  and my record  collection
contains about 650 disks.  I don't side with either the digital folks or
the Linn people; My reference  systems are at Lincoln Center and the CSU
Concert  Hall,  both in Fort  Collins,  and  Boettcher  Concert  Hall in
Denver.  I try to get to at least one of these each week.


I'd welcome any constructive comments.





Rob Gardner				Hewlett Packard
{hp-pcd,hpfcla,csu-cs}!hpcnoa!rdg	Fort Collins, Colorado 80525