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Anybody been on the Linn Forum recently?

Space is room EQ, you add filters to, for example reduce bass reinforcement caused by room modes.
But that very same software is built in to JRiver, and Roon software, many DACs now include both tone aontrols and EQ ( RME ) and it is even available built into contemporary active loudspeakers.
Keith
 
You can either measure how you room sounds, or you can take a shit estimate based on your poor tape measuring and a one size fits all guess at materials and coupled cavities.

Linn have chosen to do it their way for two reasons, it has a greater level of human/owner interaction meaning you're more invested in the process and the result so more likely to favour the outcome, and secondly if they did it with a mic you'd realise how ass basic it is and implement one of the numerous better free solutions from outside of the Linn paradigm.

Think like a sheep herder and you'll understand Linn much better.
 
Eyebroughty said:
So a similar piece of software is in other products, that correct?
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That is correct.
Where does the mic come into the solution?
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Most software uses a microphone to measure the room modes,
Linns method uses a software model of the room and adds knowledge about the the speakers being used (meaning that if your speakers haven't been measured by Linn, the default results are worse).

If you have a squarish room, the old version of Linns software did pretty well. My room has a very difficult shape, so by default the results are mediocre, to say the least.
I also used RE, with a microphone, to measure the room, and it did find the same major room modes that SPACE did, but where it, and I, went wrong was by trying to 'fix' everything; the end result was that all the life was sucked out of the music.

In the end I was very fortunate that one of the Linn forum members, who has had done over a 100 SPACE optimisations, visited me, and he used SPACE as a starting point, but than starts fine tuning to exactly pinpoint the culprits.
The end result is that my setup now sounds great (which is of course what I would say, so do with that whatever you want).

As Linns new implementation of SPACE is capable of handling funkier shaped rooms, and adds a lot more measurable parameters, the default success rate should be better. So that is good news for a lot of people.
The downside is that the Linn forum guy visited a lot of active forum members, and chances are that his manual tweaking still easily beats the new software.
My 2 cents is that that is why they closed the forums; if the majority of active forum members don't like the results, they get bad press, even if/when the software is doing OK.

Anyway, most people can gain a lot by using software, as most rooms add things to the music you don't want. So by subtracting the room from your music, you end up getting closer to the recording.

@sq225917: I wouldn't say that Linn is a acting like a sheep herder, but they do make it a lot easier to end up with a great sounding setup without having to visit shows and dealers all of the time to figure out yourself what sounds best together.
I can understand that a lot of people actually enjoy that process, but it is not something that I enjoy myself. So when I entered the world of high end audio, I decided very quickly that I wanted a single brand solution, and by chance I ended up with Linn.
Yesterday I went to a friend who has a very mixed setup, and even though I paid more for my current components, we sort of spend the same amount in total, because he has invested a lot of time, and fuel, in a lot of listening sessions in different places.
As I went fully digital, I only have to worry about a single source, meaning my setup is more focussed, and this is why my setup beats his. He owns a lot of vinyl, meaning his investment could actually be making a profit, where mine obviously is just a bunch of stupid boxes.

So Linn is not for you, that much is clear, but that doesn't mean that their, or mine, approach is worse than yours. It's just different.
If your setup sounds great, good for you. My setup, with a lot of Linn components, sounds great too. Good for me.
 
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Tin said:
So Linn is not for you, that much is clear, but that doesn't mean that their, or mine, approach is worse than yours. It's just different.
If your setup sounds great, good for you. My setup, with a lot of Linn components, sounds great too. Good for me.
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Who are you saying that Linn is not for them?
 
Eyebroughty said:
Who are you saying that Linn is not for them?
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Because he doesn't seem to like Linns approach, and there is no point in trying to convince people who have an antipathy towards a brand.

I will happily dive into discussions about science and physics, and if someone proves me wrong, I'll even try to adjust my opinion.
I'm however not entering discussions about brand preferences.

Edit: I have my own preferences as well obviously.

Edit: I don't know if this is relevant for you, but every room, unless it is really massive, think high ceiling ballrooms, has room modes, as the length(s), widht(s) and height(s) decide which frequencies become standing waves, meaning they are much stronger.
As we measure that strength in dB, the amplification of those waves scales very neatly with the volume, but obviously if you listen to music at 70dB a 20dB addition is a lot more annoying compared to when you listen at 45dB.
So some kind of method to battle room modes is always a good thing; even when you have a very large room chances are that the ceiling is low and flat enough to add an audible room mode.
I happen to have a very annoying room mode near 50Hz, meaning that the
<thumb> <thumbb> <thumb> <thumbb> in a piece of music I loved sounded like
<thumb> <THUMBBB> <thumb> <THUMBBB> because the second note was getting amplfied a lot by my room, where the first one wasn't affected at all, even though the frequencies were almost the same.
 
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sq225917 said:
You can either measure how you room sounds, or you can take a shit estimate based on your poor tape measuring and a one size fits all guess at materials and coupled cavities.

Linn have chosen to do it their way for two reasons, it has a greater level of human/owner interaction meaning you're more invested in the process and the result so more likely to favour the outcome, and secondly if they did it with a mic you'd realise how ass basic it is and implement one of the numerous better free solutions from outside of the Linn paradigm.

Think like a sheep herder and you'll understand Linn much better.
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I agree.
When the Exakt was first launched a few years ago, I went to an event in London (the violin factory from memory) and spoke with their lead person on their room correction approach. When asked why they didn't just measure the room with a microphone, the long answer I got that avoided the question gave me the impression, they can't trust their users or vendors to do it right, it was too complicated and most of all their users would hate the complication of it all. Also it did very little other than reduce the bass from about 80-30Hz by a couple of db.
 
timola said:
I agree.
When the Exakt was first launched a few years ago, I went to an event in London (the violin factory from memory) and spoke with their lead person on their room correction approach. When asked why they didn't just measure the room with a microphone, the long answer I got that avoided the question gave me the impression, they can't trust their users or vendors to do it right, it was too complicated and most of all their users would hate the complication of it all. Also it did very little other than reduce the bass from about 80-30Hz by a couple of db.
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A negative bass shelf is one of the options, but only using that is not a typical use case.
 
Tin, I have no opinion about Linn, I see their motives on the balance of probabilities. KISS. keep customers onside and in the dark as to what exists in the wider world. It's all good business strategy.
 
sq225917 said:
Tin, I have no opinion about Linn, I see their motives on the balance of probabilities. KISS. keep customers onside and in the dark as to what exists in the wider world. It's all good business strategy.
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How exactly do they keep customers in the dark?
In the LP12 section of the forum there was a subsection dedicated to 3rd party components. On the forums there have been plenty of discussions about other components, which they always allowed. As I have smallish stand mounts, I promoted older REL, which I have myself, and BK Elec subwoofers as I like those. Never been a problem, at least, not with Linn. :)

I agree with you if you mean that -most- of the time, but definitely not always, Linn tried to show 100% Linn systems, but I can't really blame them for that.
A few years ago they showed a group of forum members the newest hardware, with, if I remember correctly, KEF speakers and people wondered quite loudly why they didn't use their own. If you have a complete line of equipment, it is always a fine balance, as you're always hurting someone's feelings. I can imagine that if an amplifier brand always uses X brand speakers in shows and suddenly appears with Y, they get comments as well, but those will be more inquisevative (is that a word? I'm not a native speaker) where Linn will get frowns, no matter what.

As for keeping customers in the Dark, if you mean they're not very open about their hardware, that depends on the product. For some reason, could be patents, they always have been quiet about their amplifiers, but I have a fairly good idea what happens inside my ADSM, including why they choose the particular OS, how SPACE, DVC, Exakt and other digital filters work and I learned a lot about the importance of phase which helped me to better integrate my subs, including the tip that I should close the reflex ports to get a 12dB instead of 24dB cut off.

We also had very open discussions about Exakt and they allowed my criticism on what part of the idea I liked, and which part I had issues with.

I think they wouldn't be able to keep as much engineers and phycists among their customers if they'd be so closed as you think they were.

I have no idea what will happen next of course, the signs aren't great so far.

Edit:
For me one of the main attractions to Linn was their dedication to OpenSource, which is the total opposite from keeping people in the dark IMHO.
I can imagine that the switch to 'The Cloud' was done because they spend too much time keeping Konfig alive across different OS's. That would something I can accept.
But if they close up everything, which is what it looks like TBH, I'll try to keep my ADSM alive as long as possible, with its current SPACE configuration, and decide what to do afterwards.
I'm certainly not risking an 'upgrade' to SO, not with how my setup performs at the moment. :)
 
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I see the latest issue of HiFi + has a review of this new Linn streamer, amp, DAC thing - so isn’t it all out of the bag now..... ?
 
No, the Linn Selekt is not offensive enough for that.
The new SPACE Optimisation implementation, that can be found in Beta software probably is though.

Of course it could be something else as well: The Linn Selekt can be fitted with Class-D amps, so perhaps there are going to be more of those.
But my 2 cents is on the new SPACE Optimisation implementation.
 
The Linn forum is no more. New statement on there today reads:-

Linn Forum
8th October 2018
For the past few weeks the Linn Forum has been offline as we held our global product launches of Selekt DSM. During this time we have taken the opportunity to review the purpose, moderation and usage of the platform and have reached the conclusion that it is no longer viable for us to manage it in its current format.

Our approach in the past few years has been to take a light touch with moderation, but it’s become increasingly clear that a healthy forum needs more than that.

As a manufacturing organisation we want to focus all of our efforts on developing innovative products and so feel it is more appropriate for these conversations to take place in other forums where the resource is in place to appropriately support members.

Going forward, we are looking to address the gaps for forum members who are looking to connect with Linn:

  • Product issues and technical support: contact our customer support team on [email protected] or using the 'Report to Linn' function within your product

  • Expanded product information, product user guides and software information: use our reference site Linn Docs docs.linn.co.uk

  • Beta testing programme: a new beta platform will launch in the coming weeks and we will share details with you as soon as we can
We understand that there is a community within the Linn Forum who will want to continue their conversations on topics such as their system set up, the HiFi industry and many other things and so we are delighted to be able to announce that Hifi Wigwam will be partnering with us to allow this conversation to continue. The team at the 'Wam have already set up a Linn space and look forward to welcoming you to their community.
 
Oh well, if the Wam are to take things over that will be alright then........

Erm, perhaps - maybe
 
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