rdg@hpfcla.UUCP (03/06/84)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 80525rcd@opus.UUCP (03/10/84)
<> > 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 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... In other words, you can't use their systems successfully in rooms which have any of these devices. Lame excuse. Telephones are of the same ilk as speakers, maybe, but they are passive elements and don't really have anything to store energy. Clocks?!?!?! <<flame on>> What these guys are doing is trying to prepare enough excuses so that if their systems don't perform, they can give you a reason without blaming their equipment. <<flame off>> If you want to find real gremlins for sound reproduction, consider the difference in reflective properties of a window with drapes open and closed, not to mention the various resonant modes of a window. (Glass is highly elastic.) Remember that these speakers and such sitting around the room can't reradiate any more energy than impinges on them (Tanstaafl's law). There's the inverse-square law once on the way from the real speaker to the passive (gremlin) speaker and a second time on the way from the passive speaker to you, plus the damping of the passive system squared (once going in, once coming out again) - if you analyze it a little bit, you'll come to the conclusion that you already knew: It jest don't matter. Maybe there IS some phenomenon related to other speakers, but they haven't explained it with the store-and-reradiate myth. I'd like to hear the explanation for digital watches...sure, there are transducers in a watch, but so what??? Even the human ear/brain subsystem is an electro-acoustical transducer system. Are you going to tell me that when listening to their equipment, the Linn people don't use their <<never mind, Dick, that belongs in net.flame!>> > 5. LP vs CD. The amount of bias present in this demonstration was even > greater than in the previous one, and almost unbearably so... > Casey also always played the supposedly 'better' item second, and this > did not impress me as unbiased demonstrating... As much as I dislike this game, I've also seen it played in reverse. When Listen Up (a Denver "high-end" audio dealer) first presented the CD players in a large demo, they did an A-B with an LP first and the CD second. They played the CD a good 3 dB louder than the LP - a trick which I thought belonged to schlock stereo outfits of the "blue light special" class. (In case you don't know, with two systems of even roughly comparable quality, the one played louder will invariably sound better.) But they did it anyway, and they got away with it for about half the audience. It certainly didn't go unnoticed, though; I heard a lot of people muttering about it after the presentation. > I don't side with either the digital folks or the Linn people... AGREE!! It seems to me that you can safely stop listening as soon as an audio salesman starts either praising or cursing CD's. I almost said "you can walk out of the shop as soon..." but then you'd end up walking out of most shops. I'm finding a fair number of articles in net.audio that should also be posted in net.consumers. I have been looking for a dealer who can deal honestly with competitor's products. That is, if he carries brand x but not brand y, and I ask him about brand y, I don't want to hear unsubstantiated pejorative mumblings. I'd be happy to hear "It's good equipment; we just decided not to carry it because we can only carry so many lines and do a good job." Since the Listen Up demo I mentioned above, they've been working with local radio stations to get airplay for CD's. That's a fair enough idea, but it's gone to extremes. They're getting long interviews with the president of Listen Up. They've done entire weekends of CD-only music. Every time they play a cut from a CD, they let you know, and about half of them end with a plug for Listen Up. Now, I'd like to get a CD player eventually, but every time I get a little more of the abrasiveness from this local dealer, the date that I buy one gets a little further off. Why can't we get back to the idea that the purpose of the audio system is to present music. The end is the music, not the technology for presenting it! (Marshall McLuhan, bite your tongue...) -- {hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd
rdg@hpcnob.UUCP (03/13/84)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 this week -
just sold my Harmon-Kardon T-60 Turntable
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 80525winograd@nbires.UUCP (Steve Winograd) (03/13/84)
> 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 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... > In other words, you can't use their systems successfully in rooms which > have any of these devices. Lame excuse. Telephones are of the same ilk as > speakers, maybe, but they are passive elements and don't really have > anything to store energy. Clocks?!?!?! <<flame on>> What these guys are > doing is trying to prepare enough excuses so that if their systems don't > perform, they can give you a reason without blaming their equipment. I can testify to the truth of this effect. It's true for *** every *** hi-fi, not just a Linn-Naim system. The better the system, the more audible the effect of an extra speaker is (this means anything with a speaker in it: TV set, telephone, electronic doorbell, radio, etc). The people from the Audio Alternative (where the Linn-Naim seminar was held) have come to my house (60 miles away) several times, at no charge, to help get the most out of my system. One time we knew something was wrong but could not figure out what. The most noticable effect was a very muddy low bass. We finally found the cause: my portable cassette deck, sitting in the bookcase 10 feet from the speakers, has a 4-inch monitor speaker in it. Removing the deck from the listening room immediately cleared up the problem. Steve Winograd {allegra!ucbvax}!nbires!winograd
rmd@hpfcla.UUCP (03/28/84)
I would appreciate if someone who knows would post or mail to me a description of how the Studer sampling frequency converter (used by Telarc on their CDs) works and what (if any) degradation or changes it introduces. Rick "I'm not giving MY watch to anybody!" Dow inhp4!hpfcla!rmd