Tri-Amping?

The difference the listening room makes to a system really hit home to me whilst selling my house, house sharing with my system set up in my friends lounge and buying my new home.

The system happened to be active, but that isn't the important factor.

In my original home, the room was carpeted, had curtains, shelving and open stairs behind the listening position. The system was a pleasure to listen to, and most nights got used for several hours.

The system was later installed in a room with a wooden floor, hard walls with little furnishing and full height glass patio style windows on the long length of the room.

The same system that had given both guests and me so much pleasure, was no longer pleasant listening and got considerably less use. Without massive room treatment carpets, curtains, soft furnishings would certainly have helped, I doubt any system would be considered a pleasant listening experience.

The system was active, but all performed in the analogue domain.

They is a very well saying, "you can't polish a turd", but how much would a Linn Exakt, or a very good DSP based system, compensate for the abysmal listening environment?

I will never know in that room, but I would be extremely surprised if digital room correction wouldn't have considerably improved the musical listening experience of vinyl, by improving the critical speaker / room interaction - there was a lot of unwanted speaker / room interaction!

 

This is exactly what I am talking about!!! The difference is staggering in my room, with all the delays and phasing perfect the change is just short of amazing!!! Talk about hearing things you never heard before, it's creepy at times....

 

Yes, certainly in that room, I would expect a massive improvement. BUT, I really wouldn't be shocked or surprised if Exakt (it was a 5 way active Linn system) or a good DSP would have also noticeably improve the musicality of the system in the good listening room.

Hopefully I would have been open-minded enough to try it.

As for Linn digitising the output of an LP12, at the earliest opportunity in their top system, I don't believe for one minute that they believe digital is perfect, simply that digital done well (using Exakt / Space in their world), offers big benefits, and less musical information is lost, that keeping the vinyl analogue throughout.

I an now married with a very lively son, and the system is compromised by having toy boxes and cuddly toys in between the speakers, but learning from my experience of the horrible sounding room, I did veto three houses because the potential listening room (lounge in wife speak) were less than ideal, before "agreeing" to the one we bought!

 

Beautiful veneers! Guess these would sound really dead, listening outside, without DSD, despite tri-amping!

 

LOL! This was taken during outdoor anechoic measurements - the platform below the speaker is 1m above ground level so I had pure data to work with before calibrating indoors.

 

Al makes different crossovers at different price points. My ALK crossovers have one air core inductor and one that has an iron core. Since I am not a microwave engineer by profession, I have a tendency not to second guess him.

In most instances, whatever you have, there is always something better out there, usually at a much higher price point.

ALK makes more expensive crossovers that have air core inductors.

The ES400 for the Klipschorn.



The shipping weight on a pair of these is 39-lbs. I would call these some hefty crossovers.