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Linn Sondek CD12 CD Player

A funny thing happened to Linn Product's Brian Morris when he attempted to bring Linn's new Sondek CD12 through Customs as hand-luggage:

Customs agent: "What's in the box, sir?"

Brian: "A CD player."

Customs agent: "Value?"

Brian: "$20,000."

Customs agent: "Who are you trying to kid? I know what CD players are worth—I've got one. Go stand over there until we sort this out."

It took a whole day, Linn's customs broker, and a flurry of phone calls, but eventually Brian did bring the CD12 into this country and deliver it to me in Santa Fe. But the…

Linn Sondek CD12 CD Player Page 2

Isn't it grand?
The CD12's parallels with Linn's LP12 Sondek turntable aren't at all coincidental. The CD12 is the first Linn product since that venerable classic to bear the "Sondek" designation, which Linn says it reserves for one product every quarter century or so. They've produced CD players before, but this one is something special, they say.

It certainly looks it. This isn't just another black box. The compact chassis is machined from two plates of solid aluminum alloy to a tolerance of about 1 micron—a process that takes Linn's sister company, Castle Precision Engineering,…

Linn Sondek CD12 CD Player Page 3

Softly, as in a morning sunrise
All of which wouldn't have amounted to a hill of beans had the Sondek CD12 not sounded fantastic. But it did. It had a sense of ease that was nothing short of remarkable. There was no edge, no grit, no haze, no hyper detail—nothing that sounded in the slightest way "digital" in any pejorative sense. In fact, the CD12 reminded me of nothing so much as my full-blown Linn LP12/Lingo/Cirkus/Ekos/Arkiv/Linto analog front-end. The two aren't quite identical, but they share more sonic attributes than not.

What does that mean? Well, to go through a sonic…

Linn Sondek CD12 CD Player Page 4

Compared to what?
But that's all rather vague and touchy-feely. I had on hand Sonic Frontiers' $14,000 Class A Transport 3/Processor 3 combo (reviewed in the October 1998 Stereophile) for comparison, having hijacked them from October's cover shoot. Shannon Dickson was right—the SF gear sets a high standard for CD playback—but I liked the Linn better. The T3/P3 threw a huge soundstage for Mahler's Das Klagende Lied (Tilson Thomas/San Francisco Symphony, RCA 68599-2). Even though the piece is as early-Mahler as you can get, the orchestral writing is assured—and the Sonic Frontiers combo…

Linn Sondek CD12 CD Player Specification

Specifications Description: Single-chassis CD player incorporating HDCDª decoding, with remote control. Analog outputs: two pairs unbalanced RCA, one pair balanced XLR. Digital output: one BNC with Linn Sync Link, one AES/EBU balanced XLR, one ST optical, one TosLink optical. D/A conversion: four 20-bit Burr-Brown PCM 1702U-K DACs. Digital filter: Pacific Microsonics PMD-100 (8x oversampling). Frequency response: 5Hz-20kHz, +/-0.2dB. THD: 0.0017% at 1kHz; 0.0017% 10Hz-20kHz. S/N ratio: better than 108dBFS, 22Hz-22kHz, unweighted. Channel separation: better than 120dB at 1kHz. Maximum output…

Linn Sondek CD12 CD Player Associated Equipment

Associated Equipment

LP playback: Linn LP12/Lingo/Cirkus/Ekos/Arkiv.

CD playback: Sonic Frontiers Transport 3/Processor 3.

DVD player: Denon DVD-3000.

Preamplification: Linn Linto phono section, Conrad-Johnson ART and Mark Levinson No.380S line preamplifiers.

Power amplifiers: two Mark Levinson No.332s, for biamping.

Loudspeakers: B&W Nautilus 801, B&W Silver Signature.

Cables: Madrigal CZ-Gel 1, Kimber Black Pearl, Straight Wire Crescendo...

Accessories: API Power Wedge Ultra, Cinemedia PowerPRO 20 Professional Series AC…

Linn Sondek CD12 CD Player Measurements 1

Measurements
The Linn Sondek CD12 was pretty good at error correction, coping easily with the Pierre Verany Test CD up through track 31, which has a 1mm gap in the data spiral. It did start to stumble on track 32, which has a 1.25mm data gap. The output polarity was noninverting from both single-ended and balanced outputs, the latter wired with pin 2 hot. The maximum output level at 1kHz was 1.987V single-ended, 3.87V balanced, with source impedances of 235 ohms and 596 ohms, respectively.

The CD12's frequency response from both unbalanced and balanced outputs at 0dBFS is shown in…

Linn Sondek CD12 CD Player Measurements 2

Using PCM1702 DACs operated in differential mode results in excellent linearity. The left-channel balanced-output error is shown in fig.4—it remains below +/-2dB to below -110dBFS, which is as about as good as it gets. The right channel (not shown) was identical. Not surprisingly, considering the CD12's superb linearity and low noise floor, its reproduction of an undithered 1kHz sinewave (fig.5) is essentially perfect. Three distinct voltage levels can be easily made out, and there is even a hint of the Gibbs Phenomenon "ringing" evident at the bit transitions.

Fig.4 Linn Sondek…

Linn Sondek CD12 CD Player Measurements 3

Not only were noise levels low, but so was distortion. Even into a punishing load of 600 ohms, the spectrum of a full-scale 61Hz sinewave (fig.6) showed no harmonic products. (The spikes between 600Hz and 700Hz in this graph appear so often in Audio Precision FFT-derived plots that I suspect they are mathematical artifacts.) With the high-frequency intermodulation torture test (fig.7), the 1kHz difference component does poke its head above the noise floor, but at -96dB it is still at an inconsequential level, even into 600 ohms. The Sondek must have a bomb-proof output stage.

Fig.6…

Krell KRC-HR preamplifier & Audio Standard power amplifier

About a decade ago, I read in Stereophile about the SRC, an add-on remote-control unit manufactured by Acoustic Research. I bought one the next day ('swhat happens when you work across the street from a hi-fi shop). Suddenly I was able to make incremental changes in volume and balance from my listening position—and let me tell you that that's the way to do it. What a phenomenal difference in realistic dynamics and soundstaging.

But there was a fly in the ointment. My system wasn't state-of-the-art by any stretch, but it was reasonably transparent. With the AR remote in the circuit, it…