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Impressions,
Part II: Linn — A Study in Synergy, The Arkiv phono cartridge & Linto phono amp
by David W. Robinson
Review Brews
Long-time readers of Positive Feedback know that we’ve had a long-time interest in synergy in audio systems. The traditional "device under test" (DUT) approach places a component into a reviewer’s "reference system" (whatever that may be — some references need to have their references checked!) and then comments with seeming authority on the outcome. I have seen enough highly debatable results of such an approach to be convinced that it is a limited technique, at best. (Pace, Harry, et al.!)
All combinations of audio components are unique. All audio settings are one-of-a-kind. No two sets of sensibilities and preferences are the same. Any substitution or addition — any change — to the audio chain, may alter that path in ways both profound and subtle. Therefore the consideration of any audio component must not be done as if it had been isolated in a vacuum; it must be done in the context of the complete audio environment.
This includes everything from the recordings and media used, to the power supply/cabling of the room and components, the components, the component rack(s), the materials used in all components, isolation/acoustical grounding techniques, the interconnects, the speakers, any tweaks/enhancements that are in use, proper phase and polarity, acoustical treatments, the design of the listening room, its acoustical noise floor and signature… even (especially) the mood, prejudices and attitudes of the listener/reviewer. None of these myriad aspects may be ignored when listening critically for the purpose of expressing one’s impressions.
As a result, I have sought to engage the larger question of audio synergy in my comments over the years. I don’t know of any components that are good in all cases; I’d wager that none of our readers do, either. Magic happens in one of two cases: either an isolated piece of equipment is placed into a system, and serendipitously shines in that setting, or components are designed with synergy in mind. They are made to go together with something else, and thus do so.
As an example of this, Scott Frankland outlined his thoughts on this concept in his article "The Amp/Speaker Interface, Part I: Single-Ended Amps" in Positive Feedback, Vol. 7, No. 4. The single-ended amplifier does an excellent job of forcing the significance of system synergy to our attention, as Scott so clearly illustrates. Because of the nature of its design and output, single-ended cannot escape a crucial consideration of the loudspeaker that it will be attached to. It cannot attempt to ignore the question of loudspeaker load by doing what so many high-end amplifiers have done throughout the ‘80’s and ‘90s: simply overwhelming the question by brute force (high power/current). This is why there is such a need for quality high-efficiency loudspeaker designs in single-ended audio — it makes the task of selling such amplifiers much simpler.
In other words, single-ended audio has forced designers to deal with the art of amplifiers and speakers not as if they were two different realms, but as if they were two aspects… two faces… of one design topology.
Synergy in its most naked… and imperative… form.
Many audio artisans are well enough aware of the desirability for system synergy. The problem is in doing anything about it. Ideally, audiophile companies would, at the least, build an entire audio chain, one that was consistent to a creative vision from the source to the speakers. The character, the voicing, of the audio reproduction would be more or less according to the artistic preferences of a designer or a design team.
Nothing would be left to chance and serendipity; everything would be made to go together.
There are practical problems, of course. The greatest difficulty lies in the largely irreducible dilemma of the listening room itself. It is extremely rare that an audiophile has the luxury of designing and building a true listening room. Even when he does, he may err, constructing a room with mistakes in design/execution. The room may not be large enough for some systems — too large for others. And naturally, the audiophile manufacturer does not usually have any opportunity to lay out a room for its equipment, even if it happened to have an entire audio chain available. (Although it should be noted that Michael Green has made significant attempts in the direction of complete audio chain production, complete with room design as an audiophile consulting practice.)
The second difficulty is that there aren’t very many audiophile companies who could provide a complete audio chain in the first place. Most audio companies specialize in some portion of audio — preamps and amps, or loudspeakers, or turntables, or digital sources, or cabling — and do not venture out into the larger context. There are reasons for this, of course. Many companies prefer to stick to what they’re most knowledgeable about; others simply lack the funds to do more than what they’re doing.
But there are a few audiophile companies that do have the rare combination of vision and ability, wedded to capital, that allow them to provide a complete audio chain — an audio synergy — in their own image, and according to their own likeness. AudioNote has done this; so has Meridian.
And so, over many years, has Linn…
My first contact with Linn came back in the later ‘80s, when I was considering a turntable purchase. My good friend, salesman, and unindicted audiophile co-conspirator Dennis Wright had me come over to the now-departed Hawthorne Stereo; he said that he had the turntable for me.
"Just bring along one of your favorite records… don’t clean it or anything… and I’ll show you something," he said.
So I came by with a copy of The Best of Manhattan Transfer and sat down for the demo in Hawthorne’s main listening room. He put it on a turntable, queued the stylus — and I was in love! I had never heard a turntable sound so good; I had actually wondered whether or not I should simply upgrade to CD playback when I heard this demo. The turntable was a Linn LP-12, with an Ittok tonearm; which cartridge it was I do not remember. But the impression of smooth, beautiful music from that not particularly special LP has never left me. I purchased the LP-12.
Over the years, I’ve upgraded the LP-12 time and again. First came the Ekos tonearm… after that the Troika cartridge… and then the Lingo power supply. The Cirkus upgrade was applied … I tried the Hovland phono cable. A Vibraplane isolation platform was put into place last year, and Shakti OnLines placed on the phono cables. I’ve written about these modifications and their improvements over the years in PF. It was always pleasing to do the Linn upgrades — there wasn’t an upgrade that didn’t provide some very real and noticeable improvement in the sound of the turntable.
And so things stood when Linn and I made contact in the Spring of 1997. This was noteworthy in that I had no formal contact with the company prior to this time. The former US distributor, Audiophile Systems, Inc., was known to me, but I had never heard from any of the people in the Isles. It was in early 1997 that Linn took over the distribution of its line in the US, setting up a Linn USA office. As part of that program, Linn contacted a number of US operations, PF among them, and informed us of the changes underway. Would we be interested in hearing more about what they were doing, and perhaps doing some reviewing?
Oh yes!
I got in touch with Linn USA’s headquarters in New Jersey, and was routed to Brian Morris via his email address. Brian was heading up the setup of Linn’s US operations; he was the person that I would need to confer with. Contact with Brian followed shortly thereafter, in late August and September of 1997.
We hit it off well. After some email conversation back and forth, Brian committed Linn to the shipment of the latest generation Arkiv cartridge, together with the new phono preamp, the Linto. Arrangements were made to have Brian Morris, and Linn’s West Coast representative, Barnaby Fry, come out to Portland and visit PF Central in the Fall, after the new gear was in place and broken in. It would give them a chance to meet the River City Gang, hear the Linn gear in listening room one, and make sure that all was performing up to par.
The gear arrived within a week, precisely as promised. (Perhaps only other audiophile editors/reviewers can fully appreciate the how rare this is! Publication dates aren’t the only thing that can lag in this industry… ) I had Gary and Cindy Kerr down at Audio Gallery (503-699-8888) do the installation of the new Arkiv cartridge, putting my venerable Troika into mothballs, and also making sure that the LP-12 was up to snuff. While we were at it, I had Gary remove the Hovland phono cable and replace it with a Cardas Audio DIN to RCA block, so that I would be able to insert various interconnects into the phono section. The Cardas unit is a nice piece of work if you want to review various interconnects on the LP side of the fence, though purists might fault the move. Personally, I thought the sound to be improved. After all the work, Gary and Cindy were impressed with the sound of the Arkiv as they put a few hours on it at their store. When I came in to pick it up, so was I…
The Linto and Arkiv-equipped LP-12 went into place in PF’s fully dedicated listening room one for extended break-in. At that time, room one was running the fine Graaf 200 WPC OTL’s, Graaf preamp, and the exceptional Nova USA Rendition speakers. The phono section was being driven by my trusty Coda 03P phono amp.
The Linto was surprising. Not in looks — it is the familiar Linn attractive and textured "black box" — but in weight. It was relatively light and unprepossessing… enough to make me wonder about what was inside, and what it would sound like, given its heft. No fancy switching; just a power button up front, and RCA’s in the back. According to the manual, the Linto supports both high and low output MC’s, with low output as the default. You must go inside the box to shift to high output. Other than that, the Linto is simplicity itself.
Being eager to put the Linto into place, I simply placed it on the floor, plugged the unit into the Tice Signature III power block, and cabled up the Cardas RCA phono block with some Cardas Golden Cross. (Nothing like heavy-duty audiophile tweaking, eh?) Right off, I noticed something of real importance: the Linto had a noise floor that was extraordinary. This thing was quiet. I have felt for a very long time that one of the most difficult challenges in audio is that of silence. Can we conjure up what the photographer Paul Caponigro called "the wise silence"? "Air"? "Presence"? "Transparency"?
Can we get out of the way of the recording?
All that I was hearing was the slight hiss and light power hum of the Graaf amplifier — nothing that I could attribute to the Linto. The Coda 03P was no slouch as a phono amp, but I was used to hearing the usual sort of white noise increment as the cost of listening to my beloved vinyl. But with the Linto… nothing. Brian explained that this was the result of Linn’s excellence of design and componentry, coupled with their Linn Brilliant SMPS power supply technology.
On went some vintage MoFi vinyl… Sgt. Pepper’s… and zounds!! It was clear that I was hearing an extraordinary phono preamp, and this right out of the box and laying on the floor. The Linto passed my acid test: I was pulled right into my "listening chair," which was where I spent the next several hours, listening to LP after LP, more pleased with each one as I went. Everything was really right. The Troika was a good cartridge, but it was clear that the Arkiv had better bass… tighter, more controlled… and remarkable dynamics. Timbre was more clearly delineated; the soundstage was as wide as the Troika/Coda combination, but was notably deeper and somewhat higher.
The combination of the Arkiv and the Linto showed the kind of killer synergy worth going a very long way to get. There is an ease — a rightness — that I’ve never had in my listening room before. Control, without sacrificing musicality; listening to vinyl for hours was more enjoyable than it had ever been before.
While I have not heard anything like every phono amp/phono section, I have heard some good ones, and have spent some time with the phono amp that I believe to be a world-class benchmark, Scott Frankland’s exceptional MFA MC Reference preamp. With its –92 dB noise floor, Scott’s design epitomized a phono section of the highest caliber. The Linto is the first phono amp I’ve heard that I would put into that same stellar company — and this at only $1,500.00 MSRP!
Brian and Barnaby arrived for a listening session in early November of 1997. I was pleased to meet them; far from being stuffy bores of the sort who are common enough in high-end audio, they were both humorous and mellow types, quite the kindred souls. We hit it off right well enough at dinner over some first rate Northwestern salmon and wine. Brian and I would later discover a mutual passion for fine single-malt whisk(e)ys… what more did one need?!
Having a go at the music was all the more pleasant with companions like these. Brian and Barnaby were interested to hear how the Arkiv/Linto would sound in listening room one, and, it turns out, had brought along a surprise: Linn’s new 5103 reference AV preamp/system controller and 5101 programmable remote. Was I interested in giving it a go later in the evening?
Oh yes!!
First of all, we gave the Arkiv/Linto a go with the default rig, as outlined above. We were doing some serious foot-tapping and head-bobbing, I can tell you. The Arkiv/Linto combination was showing itself to be exceptionally detailed, authoritative, and always musical, characteristics that have been noted by a number of listeners since then (Scott Frankland and Clark Johnsen included). The music breathed; it had pace, slam, rhythm — lordy, it was wonderful!
For some three hours we went at a stack of LPs from my collection, ranging from some DCC Elvis to MoFi’s Dark Side of the Moon and Sgt. Pepper’s to the old original RCA pressing (yuck!) of Hot Tuna. At one point I tossed on a Tom Port rave, The Commitments, Vol. 1 — love that Dublin R&B! (If you haven’t seen the movie, glom onto the laser disc: it’s one heckuva treat!)
In every case, the Arkiv/Linto put the music into listening room one like I’ve never heard. The bass was rich, but tight and clearly under control. Everything from Pink Floyd’s fabulous opening heartbeat to a sense of the studio at Abbey Road was wrapped around us with an effortless authority. I had always thought my Troika to be very fine in that regard — certainly well beyond my earlier Asaka — but the Arkiv clearly bests even the Troika in bass extension and articulation.
Timbre and detail were exceptional: Kim Carnes’ "Betty Davis Eyes" was sultry, breathy, saliva in your throat "you are there" in its Japanese pressing, without sounding too forward. Dynamics were slammy-whammy, punchy without being in your face, and free from mistracking or distortion. High frequency extension was remarkable, and I rated the soundstaging and imaging as the best ever in my listening room, on every well-known album that I listened to.
Clearly, the Arkiv/Linto were elevating the vinyl experience to a remarkable level with the LP-12.
Right around midnight, Barnaby ducked out and brought in the 5103. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, at first. As I will outline in part two of this review in our next issue, the 5103 is a complex array of capabilities, all residing within a remarkably compact and civil looking enclosure. It is built not only for stereo, but also for a number of other home theatre/in-wall applications as well. I really hadn’t seen anything quite like it, but was willing to give it a try, given B&B’s royal raves about it.
We proceeded to take the system apart, to insert the preamp into the loop. It was a demo piece that B&B had been using, and therefore had sufficient hours on it to be considered "broken in." We let it heat up for a few moments, then fired up another go-round on the LPs.
The 5103 was impressive. Indeed, under the circumstances, the performance of the preamp was very fine. After only a few moments, it was showing itself to be better than any other preamp that I had used in listening room one. Like the Arkiv/Linto combo, it was silent… no discernible noise, no hum, nothing. Brian explain that the Linn power supplies were of the most extraordinary sort, and offered that sort of characteristic performance and relatively light weight quite naturally.
The sound was quite uncolored: effortless, transparent. The Arkiv/Linto tandem was revealed ever more clearly for the world-class reference pair that it is.
Brian and Barnaby were clearly pleased that I was so taken with the sound of the LP-12/Ekos/Lingo with Arkiv/Linto. Actually, I was more than simply impressed: the Arkiv/Linto lifts the Linn LP playback system to the highest level. I therefore enthusiastically give the Linn Arkiv phono cartridge and Linto phono preamp Positive Feedback’s highest recommendation. It is the finest phono cartridge/phono preamp combination in current production that I have ever reviewed. (And those who know my writing know how very rare it is for me to make such a categorical commendation.)
Kudos to Linn Products for their exceptional accomplishment on behalf of our beloved vinyl!
More to come…
I heard enough that weekend to decide that PF would have to do far more with the Linn synergy than could be done at one go. Brian and Barnaby had enjoyed the Graaf gear and the Nova Renditions in listening room one — so much so that they were excited about the idea of getting a complete Linn reference setup in for a serious audition. Was I interested?
Damn right!!!
This would be an extraordinary opportunity to hear a complete reference system, built from one end to the other by a single company, with a single vision of what high-end audio could achieve. Synergy in spades — glorious!
So Brian and I put our heads together over some 10 year old Laphroaig whisk(e)y (a very important dimension of the experience, those libations!), and he allowed that Linn would likely be willing to send a complete reference set, including a 5103 A/V preamp, 5101 remote, a complete stack of Klout amps with Aktiv crossovers, and a pair of Linn’s reference Keltik speakers with stands. He and Barnaby would drop in again and help to set it all up, and make sure that all was as it should be.
And that is just what they did… as you’ll see in the next installment!
The Linn
Arkiv phono cartridge, $2200 MSRP
The Linn Linto phono preamp, $1500 MSRP
Linn Products
Limited
Floors Road, Waterfoot, G76 OEP
Scotland, UK
Phone: 44-(0)141-307-7777
FAX: 44-(0)141-644-4262
Email: helpline@linn.co.uk
Internet: www.linn.co.uk/linn
In the USA
Linn, Inc.
P.O. Box 455
Pompton Plains, NJ 07444
4540 Southside Boulevard
Suite 402
Jacksonville, FL 32216