Media Server Reviews

Linn Knekt Kivor hard-disk multizone music system Associated Equipment

Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment

Digital sources: Mark Levinson No.31.5 CD transport, Meridian 800 DVD-V/CD/CD-R player, Technics DVD-A10 DVD-A player.
Digital processors: Z-Systems rdp-1 digital control center; Perpetual Technologies P-3A (with $349 Monolithic Sound P3 power supply), Musical Fidelity X-24K, Mark Levinson No.30.6 D/A processors; dCS 972 D/D processor.
Power amplifiers: Mark Levinson No.33H monoblocks, Krell KSA-50.Loudspeakers: Revel Ultima Studio, Revel Performa M20, Totem Acoustic Mani-2, Joseph Audio RM33 Signature.
Cables: Datalinks: AudioQuest SVD-4 (S/PDIF), 50' unbranded Cat.5 Ethernet cable (AES/EBU), Kimber Illuminations Orchid (AES/EBU).
Interconnects: Linn and Canare unbalanced (processors to preamp); Madrigal CZ-Gel balanced (pre- to power). Speaker: AudioQuest Gibraltar, Synergistic Research Designer's Reference2. AC: Synergistic Research Designer's Reference2, PS Audio Lab Cable.
Accessories: PS Audio Power Plant 300 at 90Hz (preamp, processors), Audio Power Industries Power Wedge 116 (Tunboks), ASC Tube Traps, RPG Abffusors.—John Atkinson

COMPANY INFO
Linn
8787 Perimeter Park Boulevard
Jacksonville, FL 32216
(904) 645-5242
www.linninc.com
ARTICLE CONTENTS

COMMENTS
MikeMaine's picture
Submitted by MikeMaine on May 5, 2011 - 5:09pm

Or you can buy a Mac

CuteStudio's picture
Submitted by CuteStudio on December 29, 2016 - 3:41pm

... that you can run the SeeDeClip4 multiuser music server on a regular, noisy PC in the spare room and access and/or control the music using any modern gadget like a Chromebook, tablet, iPad etc.

This makes the choice of client easy - there's lots of cheap alternatives and an iPad can be hooked up to Toslink using an Apple TV or Airport Express etc.

The free version does a lot more than you'd think, it's a complete home audio solution.

JonGreen's picture
Submitted by JonGreen on May 31, 2018 - 5:30am

A little late to the table(!), but thanks for an excellent, well-balanced review.

I was the systems architect of the Imerge SoundServer, which was rebadged (with some enhancements) as Linn's Kivor. I also designed the XiVA-Link communications protocol, and worked with Linn's Alan Clark (designer of the iconic Sondek CD12) on the S/PDIF hardware and drivers: Alan did most of the hardware work; I assisted in some of the FPGA firmware, and write the drivers.

I can confirm the accuracy of just about everything reported here. During 2000, both SoundServer and Kivor were going through a series of rapid evolutions. Towards the end of 2001, the products were settling down.

I'm a little surprised that they were reported as being MP3-only, though. One of the key selling points for audiophiles was that both products were able to rip and play uncompressed audio. This is why SoundServer (and, I believe, Kivor) came with up to 1.1 TB of storage - a massive amount at the time - configured as eleven 100 GB drives. It ran hot and heavy (and, yes, a bit noisy), but had enough elbow room to accommodate a lot of raw audio.

It was true that we only had one genre allocated to a track or album. This was partly because of the limited information we received from Gracenote. I always felt that having more than one genre per item in the database would be a good thing, but I was over-ruled. Apart from anything else, it would have made genre-based searches substantially slower, for a bunch of technical reasons it's not worth going into here. I think that if we'd done it today, we'd have used a noSQL database such as MongoDB or Couchbase, so we could have had the flexibility to enhance with additional fields such as user-assigned genres or arbitrary tags.

Anyway, thanks again. Great memories, revisiting that part of my career!

Jon

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