LINN 'Lemon' anti-CD ad ...

[Chumpy]

Thanks for all input on this topic - I seem to have given my only Linn 'lemon' ad away 7 yrs ago/amazed to find that I still in old magz have all of the others I remember - scans on SoulSeek most UK mornings ...

Vinyl was/is lovely, 'cos that's how we received the tunes.

CD was/is convenient, although often diminished.

I agree that I prefer to have paid-for CD/minuscule artwork rather than a paid-for download.

Sometimes sole recording of e.g. song is obtainable only via download.

Objectively, CD-digital ushered in the end of fine recorded music. (Probably because creativity moved to digital technology rather than being just a matter of making nice sound).

Subjectively, feel the tunes as best suits you.

 

[Clive D]

"Bouncing a diamond down a vinyl valley is possibly the most primitive method of reproducing music that you can imagine. And yet the Linn Sondek turntable I bought for £250 a quarter of a century ago still sounds better than my £2,000 CD player."

So wrote Geoff Hill in The Sunday Times three days ago in a review of a BMW motorbike whose engine owes its roots to Karl Benz who patented the boxer design in 1896. (Thought this might be of interest to Chumpy who is unlikely to find the ad scan he's after.)

 

[halvis]

It sounds like Geoff bought the wrong £2000 CD player ;-)

 

[Basil]

It sounds like Geoff bought the wrong £2000 CD player ;-)

Hmmmmm!

Well, enjoy all those new classical, lp only, releases!

The CD version of Stokowski Bach transcriptions arrived this morning and makes the lp version I have sound broken...


;-)

 

[Warren Day]

"Bouncing a diamond down a vinyl valley is possibly the most primitive method of reproducing music that you can imagine. And yet the Linn Sondek turntable I bought for £250 a quarter of a century ago still sounds better than my £2,000 CD player."

Thomas Edison must have known what he was doing.

 

[Clive D]

But did Thomas Edison ever have a BMW motorbike?

 

[Basil]

But did Thomas Edison ever have a BMW motorbike?

No...?

 

[Mescalito]

"Bouncing a diamond down a vinyl valley is possibly the most primitive method of reproducing music that you can imagine. And yet the Linn Sondek turntable I bought for £250 a quarter of a century ago still sounds better than my £2,000 CD player."

So wrote Geoff Hill in The Sunday Times three days ago in a review of a BMW motorbike whose engine owes its roots to Karl Benz who patented the boxer design in 1896. (Thought this might be of interest to Chumpy who is unlikely to find the ad scan he's after.)

S'funny...the £30.00 ASDA-bought DVD player playing CDs dumps all over the LP12/Ittok/Troika I bought in the late 70's through early 80s.

Chris

 

[Plutox]

S'funny...the £30.00 ASDA-bought DVD player playing CDs dumps all over the LP12/Ittok/Troika I bought in the late 70's through early 80s.

Which is exactly why Ivor was bricking it when he first realised what digital audio would become capable of...

 

[pickwickpapers]

ClickRepair is awesome. And that is before you find out it is cheap shareware.

http://www.clickrepair.net/

I wrote a quartet of articles on digitising records.

http://www.tnt-audio.com/sorgenti/rip_it_1_e.html

an AOS thread highlighted 'vinylstudio' and 'wave corrector' - both very reasonably priced, and surprisingly (to me) capable.

 

[Fozz]

Think I remember the lemon ad, there was also one with Noddy and Big Ears I recall. I think Linn used to have the outside back cover of Hi-Fi review?

If so I've got a stash of them packed away in the loft, next time I'm up there I'll see if I can find it and do a scan for you.

And then sell the magazine back to Linn for their archives, or swap it for a Keel and radical...I'm a reasonable man!

 

[Chumpy]

Think I remember the lemon ad, there was also one with Noddy and Big Ears I recall. I think Linn used to have the outside back cover of Hi-Fi review?

If so I've got a stash of them packed away in the loft, next time I'm up there I'll see if I can find it and do a scan for you.

And then sell the magazine back to Linn for their archives, or swap it for a Keel and radical...I'm a reasonable man!

Thanks - I have lots of them bar 'lemon' scanned from old magz now shared most UK mornings on SoulSeek.

These include - Book of Linn-Origin of speakers-Deflated etc note-Kettle etc drum-Lingo-Jelly rock-Mixer-Noddy-Room for improvement-Sofa-Letters crossovers-Flags (Jap-Scot)-Kit STOL VTOL aircraft-Pasta wife-Blowup doll.

 

[Fozz]

Thanks - I have lots of them bar 'lemon' scanned from old magz now shared most UK mornings on SoulSeek.

These include - Book of Linn-Origin of speakers-Deflated etc note-Kettle etc drum-Lingo-Jelly rock-Mixer-Noddy-Room for improvement-Sofa-Letters crossovers-Flags (Jap-Scot)-Kit STOL VTOL aircraft-Pasta wife-Blowup doll.

Ahh yes! Think I remember most of those, except the Wife-Blowup Doll which I think would have stuck in my memory!!!

There was some enterprising soul? Selling framed prints of Linn adverts on Ebay a while back, stating "Perfect for your listening room wall!"

...There must be gold in those old Hi-Fi mag back copies!

 

[MTrei]

The Wikipedia article is conflating two ads that Linn ran around the same time.

The first one had a notepad with a list of failed formats written on it like Elcaset, 8 track, etc, and each name had been crossed out implying that it had failed. The final format on the list was Compact Disc, and a hand holding a pen was poised ready to cross that one out too.

The second ad was more cryptic, and simply had a picture of a lemon with the caption "Is this a lemon?"

 

[Bradders]

And yet when Ivor accepted the challenge to put his assertions about digital to the test, he failed, miserably.

http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/bas_speaker/abx_testing2.htm

The author's name is Lipshitz!

LIPSHITZ!!!!!

 

[Werner]

Thomas Edison must have known what he was doing.

Do you happen to know how TE did his listening tests?

This is a pertinent question. I'd like someone to come up with the answer.

 

[AndyU]

Don't know about listening tests, but like many of his successors in the turntable business Edison wasn't shy when it came to hype.

Perfect sound, but was it forever?

 

[darrylfunk]

well i know he didn't have a full audio precision rig.

 

[Mescalito]

FWIW I wasn't actually disagreeing with Serge.

CD is technically better, even to the mechanically/technically buffoon level I've reached. I can still know enough to look at the specs and call an egg an egg.

.. My point was that the method of replay is not the biggest factor, the quality of the mastering is.. and two identical (looking) CD's or LP's can be mastered entirely differently.

I just wish it was like the old days of the Penguin Jazz guide, where you could look up mastering of CD's and see which one's were crap before you bought them on Amazon or wherever.

+1

Chris

 

[GTM]

...

Does signal to noise ratio not matter at all? One format demonstrably can achieve 90dB or more (given suitable source material), the other demonstrably cannot.

Think so? take a look at the following page of empirical measurements made of a real record deck playing real LPs against the same albums on CD. Not the difference you might imagine.

See Here

Stereo separation is possibly not as important as some make out, but again one is likely to be 40dB (at best) or far less (maybe only 10dB at the extremes of frequency range) whilst the other can exceed that by orders of magnitude.

Good carts can achieve the required 25-30dB that is all that is necessary for full stereo separation, the rest is moot.

Further, a decently implemented CD player is practically ruler flat in frequency response from well below audible frequencies up to the effective limit of human hearing (for most humans), whilst LP is probably not.

Evidence? probably? I've seen measured output curves of top flight carts which are within +/- 0.5db from 20hz to 20khz (and extend out to 50khz).

Anyway it's moot, even the best speakers in real rooms are +/- 3dB or more over the audible spectrum, (usually +/- 5-10dB at bass frequencies)

Of course there is measurable superiority of CD over LP in a lot of areas. There are some areas where LP is measurably superior to CD (low signal level THD is one - due to CD quantization error levels). But as CD advocators like to point out, how much of the superiority is necessary in real world environments to achieve an accurate enough sound for human perception?
People can throw around THD, frequency/dynamic range, noise floor figures around all day but is there evidence that we can even hear the difference? or that it's even implemented in the real world? or that it even matters over the frequency range that is really important for music reproduction (i.e. 40hz to 8-10khz).