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Linn LP12 vs Digital

Octavian said:
It is good to keep in mind that no matter how subjectively pleasing a vinyl record may sound, it will not sound like the original recording. Digital will - or at least has the potential. Vinyl does not even have the potential. I would also steer clear of high end cottage industry dacs since the purpose of those is not necessarily reproducing the musical signal with highest possible fidelity.
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This is true, but the OP has a lampizator. he is evidently not interested in the highest fidelity, but wants a digital device with euphonic distortion. Presumably the sky's the limit when it comes to euphonic distortion. The only problem is that since people tend not to admit they want it, it is generally only produced piecemeal by people who pretend that's not what they are making, for people who pretend it's not what they want.

Progress is accordingly likely to be unpredictable.

I say buy something expensive made by an eccentric.
 
Good Afternoon all,

Don't say it too loudly but there is life after vinyl just as there is life after CD......................................

Mr Pig said:
If yo have a system which only sounds good on well mastered music then you have a system which chooses the music you play. That's not acceptable to me.
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As I, and others more experienced than me I imagine, have noted elsewhere on this forum. The better the replay system the more you become aware of how poor some source material is so yes the system does, to a degree, choose the music you can sit down and listen to. There is a whole sound stage to fill from one side wall to the other and from the rear wall out in to the room and I'm finding a fair number of things I try to listen to simply don't achieve that. Yes it can still be "good" music but do you fully enjoy it when you know there is something "missing".

Regards

Richard
 
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Mr Pig said:
If you have a system which only sounds good on well mastered music then you have a system which chooses the music you play.
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I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with that. When I first bought an LP12, it did choose the music I played, simply because it wouldn't play 45s! Given that this was at the height of the punk revolution, not being able to play 45s was a serious limitation! Mastering is a different issue though. You take 10cc's Bloody tourists for example (Canadian issue, PD-1-6161). It sounds pretty dire on any turntable that I play it on. I like it mostly for Dreadlock holiday, so I would like a copy that has better sound quality! I choose components in my system that sound good over a broad spectrum of material, but if I was trying to make a point over which source sounds better, it would be easy enough for me to pick tracks that sound better on which ever medium I desire. Mastering has got to be the most important thing in my view; I would even go so far as saying that the more you improve your turntable, the worse a badly mastered record will sound. When it comes to older, more worn records though, the reverse is true. I have albums such as Jimi Hendrix - Smash hits, that are over 50 years old, have been played on a variety of groove crunchers and still sound superb!
 
Knipester said:
I have a rega gotry AO pu7ti n my rather unusual lp12 and I have zero interest in changing it. I’ve run a Hana Ml, dynavector XX2 mkii and currently a ART9xa cart on it. The art is my favourite but the XX2 is a close second
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Hi and how did the hana ml sound in that company . phil.
 
Going back to the original post: in my experience it would make sense to upgrade the arm and cartridge; pretty much along the lines as what Mr Pig in an earlier post suggested, go for the PU9 (great arm!) and a decent moving coil.
Hope this helps.
 
wylton said:
Interesting question, worthy of a thread on its own. I remember not liking the Cirkus upgrade; the turntable only went in for a service, I'd not asked them to update it and to my ears, it completely spoilt the sound that I was used to. I upgraded the psu to a Valhalla, and later changed it to a Hercules because it enabled me to play 12"45's without using that horrible adapter, but then I bought a Norton, so I was back to square one! I did find though, that the combination of Aro/XX2mkII/Norton, could sound a bit on the soft side at times. Now I have the same LP12 with Kore/Audiomods Classic/Metal Bodied Denon 103 & that's a lot more lively. I have the choice of Lingo 1 or the Norton & interestingly, the Norton has clear advantages in at top end on this deck it just somehow sounds less notchy; there's a certain graininess apparent with the Lingo. The Karousel is intriguing though, it's had some good reviews and the price isn't that outlandish. I'm not prepared to lavish too much money on the LP12 tbh, a couple of little tweaks on the Audiomods recently have been worthwhile.
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I skipped the Cirkus and went to the Karousel after over 30 years of pre-Cirkus. That was quite a remarkable upgrade. I also remember the distinct change of character when I replaced an Ittok LVII with ARO. The Ittok's splashy treble and thunderous bass was replaced by fluidity and grace that is quite beguiling. I've had the ARO for over 20 years, and it's not going anywhere.

The biggest bang upgrade I've made to my LP12 is putting in the Greenstreet sub. It was almost as if I got the gravitas of the Ittok back and the goodness of the ARO magnified even more.

It has been a bit of a journey for my LP12. The only original bits left on it from when I bought it new in 1987 are the plinth, cover, mat and outer platter. Everything else has been changed, and all for the better.
 
James said:
I also remember the distinct change of character when I replaced an Ittok LVII with ARO. The Ittok's splashy treble and thunderous bass was replaced by fluidity and grace that is quite beguiling. I've had the ARO for over 20 years, and it's not going anywhere.
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Yes, me too; as you say, the boom-tizz encountered with the Ittok/Asak, is replaced with an all together more natural sound. I have two Aro's, one on a Garrard 401 with a Goldring rebuilt Troika and Naim Pre-Fix and the other on a Michell Hydraulic reference with a Dynavector XX2MkII. Meanwhile, the LP12 has a second life now in the second system upstairs.
 
wylton said:
I would even go so far as saying that the more you improve your turntable, the worse a badly mastered record will sound.
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I agree with that except that for me, that's not my definition of an improvement.

It really comes down to what you value, Hi-Fi or music. My priority to have a system that will let me enjoy any music I like, and I largely have that. If you 'improve' your system so that only the best recording sound good you are going to be ignoring huge swathes of our musical heritage and artistic expression. Some music was deliberately recorded to include distortion, it was an artistic choice. I understand that and for me it's part of what the artists are saying, I want to hear it.

I've heard and I've had systems that only sounded good with good recordings and it's not for me. I'd run a P1 and a pair of bookshelfs before I'd want to go there again.
 
adamdea said:
This is true, but the OP has a lampizator. he is evidently not interested in the highest fidelity, but wants a digital device with euphonic distortion. Presumably the sky's the limit when it comes to euphonic distortion. The only problem is that since people tend not to admit they want it, it is generally only produced piecemeal by people who pretend that's not what they are making, for people who pretend it's not what they want.

Progress is accordingly likely to be unpredictable.

I say buy something expensive made by an eccentric.
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This is a somewhat presumptuous and unhelpful comment. I like what sounds real to my ears. And not afraid to admit it if that means pleasing distortion. Someone earlier in this thread mentioned the biggest upgrade one can do for their audio is to get rid of FOMO and have self control. I thought that was an excellent advice. I'll add "trusting your own ears" to that. I've spent a lot of money and time in this hobby. But I've spent more on attending live music. I trust my ears and I know what sounds real to me. If that means an upstream gear is adding euphonic distortion, so be it. Our ears are not laboratory grade microphone. It's much more complex than that.

Regarding Lampizator: I don't have any brand loyalty (or design loyalty for that matter). I do not own the Lampizator, it was from a friend. I did own couple of Lampi dacs during their early days. I thought they sounded just ok but there are better dacs out there for less money. If anything I was biased against the Lampi but my friend convinced me to try his Lampi. According to him, the newer Lampi is much improved. I was skeptic but floored after I listened to it.

If measurement (or highest fidelity) is the way to go for DAC (or any other electronics), the budget priced Topping DAC (or similar ones from east) beats out many $10-20K DACs from established players. But boy, they do sound sterile, often harsh and nothing like real music. Same thing applies for euphonic distortion from SET, tube amp, and umm even turntables.
 
James said:
The biggest bang upgrade I've made to my LP12 is putting in the Greenstreet sub.
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That's interesting. I see no reason why the Greenstreet would sound audibly worse than the Keel. But a couple of Linn dealers that stock both invariably pooh-pooh the Greenstreet. They even said the Kore would better the Greenstreet. Would be nice to get an unbiased A/B comparison, someday.
 
sktn77a said:
That's interesting. I see no reason why the Greenstreet would sound audibly worse than the Keel. But a couple of Linn dealers that stock both invariably pooh-pooh the Greenstreet. They even said the Kore would better the Greenstreet. Would be nice to get an unbiased A/B comparison, someday.
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I had a Greenstreet in my LP12. I suspect it would be very difficult to tell it apart from a Keel. However, around that time, after listening to several Klimax Sondeks, I decided to cease spending money on my LP12 so I returned the Greenstreet. I had discovered other good decks which did not suffer from degenerative upgraditis.

If you look at the interstellar leaps in performance available with each official upgrade to the deck which already has an absolute monopoly on rhythm, tunes, and evoking excited responses from a wife in the next door room, by now it must have reached such a stratospheric standard that all other turntable manufacturers are insolvent and queues of many miles wind their way to every Linn dealer in the land.

Whereas my experience is that the audible advances of all the upgrades are marginal, sometimes worthwhile, but seldom justifying the price when Vilchur's original design flaws are still there and exposed by a £680 Technics SL-100C.

We are like the owner of a Ford Capri who has lavished a small fortune on keeping his pride and joy running since the 70s and we are addicted to the drama of urging it on, wheezing and spluttering its plucky way over the next hill as we listen, white-knuckled, to the engine for clues about what to replace next, so that we can keep up with the ugly modern junk which has just quietly flashed past. This is real driving, not that.

It's romantic, but it's mad.
 
sktn77a said:
I see no reason why the Greenstreet would sound audibly worse than the Keel. But a couple of Linn dealers that stock both invariably pooh-pooh the Greenstreet. They even said the Kore would better the Greenstreet.
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That is hardly surprising. You're paying for the Linn screen printed logo, which is the only thing the Greenstreet lacks.
 
Radiohead99 said:
If measurement (or highest fidelity) is the way to go for DAC (or any other electronics), the budget priced Topping DAC (or similar ones from east) beats out many $10-20K DACs from established players. But boy, they do sound sterile, often harsh and nothing like real music.
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If a DAC sounds harsh on well-recorded and mastered music then I can't see how it measures well. I have a Topping DAC and Gram Slee headphone amp and it sounds gorgeous.

Tim
 
sonddek said:
At the moment I'm listening to Amadeus GT, my own arm, VM540ML, Uphorik. DACs sound mostly indistinguishable to me, including Linn DS. I will not have enough time to listen to records before my time is up, and my DACs are not even plugged in. I'm pretty sure I would not be exclusively listening to vinyl on a Magic or mid-range Sondek. What I'm trying to say is that I don't think you have reached a vinyl zenith at all, whereas with digital you're about at the zenith. A better turntable with a better arm should solve your quandary IMO.
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If money is no object and you have a large collection of vinyl then this route can easily be taken, otherwise I would suggest for mere mortals on a limited budget, and that budget can be in excess of £10k the best option is to get your digital/streaming done correctly, and this is not cheap. Just look at the music you want to listen to or buy, is it freely available on vinyl, if not how are you going to be able to listen to it.
By all accounts, use a tt so you can still listen to your treasured vinyl collection, but investing more on the tt, I don't think is a wise move.
 
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