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This review should have appeared more than a few months ago. When I reviewed Linn's Troika cartridge back in the Fall of 1987, in Vol.10 No.6, Audiophile Systems also supplied me with a sample of the Linn LK1 preamplifier and the LK2 power amplifier, which I had intended to review in the due course of things. As it transpired, however, I was less than impressed with the LK2, finding, as did Alvin Gold back in Vol.9 No.2, that while it had a somewhat laid-back balance, it also suffered a pervasive "gray" coloration, which dried out recorded ambience and obscured fine detail.
This may seem a pain in the you know what, but good XLRs offer at least three advantages over RCA connectors: they make the ground connection before the hot, thus avoiding the possibility of blowing up loudspeakers and amplifiers; they lock, providing a mechanically secure connection; and the contacts are both gas-tight and self-wiping, ensuring a consistent contact. It is not surprising that they have become the connector of choice for all pro-audio work where people's livelihoods depend on their connectors. If you are worried about soldering your own plugs and cables to use with the LK1,…
All in all, this is pretty good line-section performance for a reasonably priced, solid-state preamplifier.
Finally, a point that came up in my review of the Hafler Iris last month was the possibility that alien remote controls might inadvertently trigger false responses. I fired every infra-red remote I could lay my hands on at the LK1 and pressed every button. Nothing. No reaction. Like the Hafler, the LK1 is probably burst-proof in this respect, therefore. One thing did occasionally intrude, which was that changing the volume occasionally produced a faint background of soft clicks,…
Sidebar 1: Review System
The following source components were used throughout the listening sessions: a 1975-vintage Revox A77 played my own and others' 15ips master tapes, a Linn Sondek/Ekos/Troika setup sitting on a Sound Organisation table played LPs, and either a Philips LHH1000 or the California Audio Labs Tempest SE were used to play CDs. For the preamp tests, the LK1, my reference Vendetta Research SCP2 phono preamp, and Stereophile's benchmark midpriced preamp, the $1209 PS Audio 4.6 with its M500 power supply, were connected to a Mod Squad Line Drive Deluxe AGT, the latter two…
Sidebar 2: Measurements
Starting with the LK280, this raised a healthy 82.6W at 1kHz at the onset of clipping into an 8 ohm resistive load with one channel driven, almost doubling to 158.9W into 4 ohms, and revealing the excellent power-supply regulation. (The power transformer mechanically hummed quite loudly at this latter level, however.) The LK280 is non-inverting, and its input impedance was slightly higher than specified, but still low at 3830 ohms, necessitating use with a preamplifier capable of driving low-impedance loads. The sensitivity was also slightly higher than spec, with…
Sidebar 3: Specifications
Linn LK1: Solid-state preamplifier with two phono inputs (MM/MC), four line-level inputs, including two tape loops, 256-step digitally switched volume control, and optional IR remote control. Specifications: Input impedance: 50k ohms (phono MM), 150 ohms (phono MC), 10k ohms (line). Nominal output level: 500mV. Phono Sensitivity: 5.0mV (MM), 150µV (MC). Line sensitivity: 500mV RMS. S/N Ratio: not specified.
Dimensions: 10.24" (260mm) W by 10.43" (265mm) D by 2.95" (75mm) H (preamplifier), 2.75" (70mm) W by 4.8" (122mm) D by 1.8" (46mm) H (remote control).…
Alon Wolf can be mesmerizing. When the founder of Magico gets going on one of his favorite subjects, loudspeaker design, the strength of his convictions, depth of technical knowledge, and sureness of response are enough to hush many a skeptic into silence.
Not that what Wolf says invites skepticism. On the contrary, it makes perfect sense. Take, for example, two of his favorite pet peeves: the medium-density fiberboard (MDF) used in a vast number of speaker enclosures, and loudspeaker design that is behind the times.
"Look around you," he explained during one of our many…
"The last speaker I actually bought," he says, "was the Sonus Faber Extrema, which I immediately found faults with, took apart, and reassembled. It eventually got to the point where I felt I could only have the speakers I wanted if I built them myself. Thanks to my work in industrial design, I was able to produce things on the computer that no one else was doing. My early designs were far more organic and flowing—speakers that are rounded and that sort of thing—than anything that was available back then. Now that approach is sort of catching on."
Fifteen years ago, Wolf built…
One of the first affordable loudspeakers I reviewed for Stereophile was the original Paradigm Reference Studio/20 bookshelf model, in the February 1998 issue (Vol.21 No.2). At the time, I felt that the $650/pair speaker was a breakthrough—although not completely devoid of colorations, its ratio of price to performance set a benchmark a decade ago. I kept the Studio/20s around for several years to compare with other bookshelf speakers I reviewed, and they remained listed in Stereophile's "Recommended Components" for several years after that. The Studio/20 is now in its fourth (v.4) iteration…
The Studio/20's ability to resolve detail had me finding new things in very familiar recordings. I thought I'd memorized every lick in Aimee Mann's "How Am I Different?," from her Bachelor No. 2 or The Last Remains of the Dodo (CD, Super Ego SE002), but for the first time I found myself following a low-level guitar line near the end of the tune, way back in the mix. And in the first movement of David Chesky's Violin Concerto, from his Area 31 (SACD/CD, Chesky SACD288, CD layer), I found myself focusing on a contrapuntal interplay between the bassoon and Tom Chiu's violin that I'd never…