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As much as I'm tempted by the impressive sweep and scale with which some of the large, full-range loudspeakers endow music, for some reason I find myself more at home with more compact examples of the breed. This is not through lack of familiarity with large speakers, a pair of B&W 801s occupying pride of place in our living room (which also serves as my wife's listening room). Yet I find myself hankering after that ultimate soundstage precision that only minimonitors seem capable of producing: the loudspeakers totally disappearing, vocal and instrumental images hanging in space, truly…
It was the same with Stereophile's recording of Robert Silverman playing Brahms's F-minor piano sonata. We had tried to capture a little bit of the sheer power of a 9' Steinway and, in all honesty, I think we succeeded. When Bob Silverman thunders out low Fs, their sound virtually rolls out of the speaker (assuming it is any good) across the rug to the listening seat. Which, again, is what you hear with the Studio 10s. The bass register of a big Steinway heard live literally purrs at the listener, yet I rarely hear this from even good systems using small speakers. This the Studios managed to…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: two-way, reflex-loaded, stand-mounted loudspeaker. Drive-units: 1" (25mm) metal-dome tweeter, 6.5" (170mm) metal-cone woofer. Crossover frequency: approximately 3kHz. Frequency response: 40Hz–20kHz ±3dB. Sensitivity: 88.5dB/W/m (2.83V). Nominal impedance: 8 ohms. Amplifier requirements: 20–200W.
Dimensions: 15.75" (400mm) H by 7.9" (200mm) W by 9.8" (250mm) D. Shipping weight: 40 lbs/pair (18kg).
Finishes available: black ash, oak, walnut, rosewood, mahogany.
Price: $3000/pair all finishes (matching stands cost $750/pair); 1990; no longer…
Sidebar 2: Review context
The speakers were positioned for the best sound (with only one pair of loudspeakers in the 21' by 16' by 9' listening room at a time), some 4' from the longer rear wall (which is faced with books and LPs) and approximately 5' from the shorter side walls (which also have bookshelves covering some of their surfaces). Source components consisted of a Revox A77 to play my own and others' 15ips master tapes, a Linn Sondek/Ekos/Troika setup sitting on an ArchiDee table to play LPs, and Kinergetics KCD-40 and Meridian 208 (Bitstream) CD players. (The latter also saw…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I use a mixture of nearfield, in-room, and quasi-anechoic FFT measurement techniques (using primarily DRA Labs' MLSSA system with a B&K 4006 microphone, but also an Audio Control Industrial SA-3050A 1/3-octave spectrum analyzer with its calibrated microphone) to investigate objective factors that might explain the sound heard. The speakers' nearfield low-frequency responses and impedance phase and amplitude were measured using the magazine's Audio Precision System One.
The Studio 10's plot of impedance amplitude and phase (fig.1) shows the twin peaks…
Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people.—an old SLA slogan
For three weeks I kept an enormous Sony television set in my listening room. I got it there by dragging it across the hardwood floor of my living room on a small scrap of carpeting, then I more or less levered the Sony onto a short metal table centered between my Quad ESL-989 loudspeakers.
I feel a little guilty about it now, but only in the sense that Patty Hearst probably feels guilty about robbing that bank. For one thing, I had an excuse: Linn Products had sent me a sample of their…
Listening
Tackling the "simplest" format first, the Linn Unidisk SC did a brilliant job with most of the old-fashioned music CDs I tried. Celibidache's live recording of Bruckner's Symphony 9, from 1995 (EMI 5 56699 2), was nothing short of mesmerizing through the Linn. The phrasing of every line was infused with feeling—appropriately—and the Unidisk had a natural, organic sense of flow: In that respect alone, the Unidisk SC actually made PCM digital sound more like DSD. It allowed Celibidache's occasionally broad tempos to work with the flow of each line, rather than seeming to fight…
Tackling the "simplest" format first, the Linn Unidisk SC did a brilliant job with most of the old-fashioned music CDs I tried. Celibidache's live recording of Bruckner's Symphony 9, from 1995 (EMI 5 56699 2), was nothing short of mesmerizing through the Linn. The phrasing of every line was infused with feeling—appropriately—and the Unidisk had a natural, organic sense of flow: In that respect alone, the Unidisk SC actually made PCM digital sound more like DSD. It allowed Celibidache's occasionally broad tempos to work with the flow of each line, rather than seeming to fight…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Single-box digital disc player with integral surround-sound processor and line-level preamp. Formats supported: CD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, SACD, VCD, SVCD, MP3. Multichannel schemes supported: DTS, Dolby Pro Logic II, SACD 5.1. Output level: variable, up to 2.0V RMS. Audio output impedance: 300 ohms. "Red Book" D/A conversion scheme: 24-bit delta sigma, 12x oversampling.
Dimensions: 13.5" (345mm) W by 3" (75mm) H by 15" (385mm) D. Weight: 9.5 lbs (4.3kg).
Serial number of unit reviewed: 1004901.
Price: $4995. Approximate number…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog Sources: Linn LP12 turntable with Linn Lingo power supply, Linn Ekos tonearm, Linn Akiva phono cartridge; Rega Planar 3 turntable with Lyra Helikon Mono, Benz ACE Mono, & Grado Reference Sonata Mono phono cartridges; Audio Note AN-S2 moving-coil step-up transformer; Linn Linto phono preamplifier.
Digital Sources: Naim CD5x CD player, Sony SCD-777ES SACD/CD player.
Preamplifier: Fi.
Power amplifiers: EAR 890, Linn Klimax Twin.
Loudspeakers: Quad ESL-989.
Cables: Interconnect: Audio Note AN-Vx, Nordost Valhalla, Linn. Speaker:…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
Despite its small size and unprepossessing appearance, the Unidisk SC is one of the most versatile components I have encountered, hence one of the most complicated to assess on the test bench. Its excellent handbook was a big help, but you do need to hook the Linn up to a TV or video monitor in order to access its setup menus. Doing so added hum, so I disconnected the TV once I had the player functioning as I needed. As well as using S/PDIF data fed to one of its TosLink digital inputs, I burned a CD-R of 16-bit test tones and a DVD-Audio–formatted DVD-R of 24-bit…