Hi-Fi Honesty

[Lindsayt]

The LP12 is the best turntable in the world - it never was.

Source First, GIGO - even in an analogue system, speakers are more important than the amplifier. In a digital system Source First doesn't apply at all.

Single speaker demos, to the extent taken by Linn; no phones nor alarms - complete bullshit.

Direct drive turntables suffer from cogging and hunting - cheap plastic ones maybe, properly engineered ones, no.

Suspended turntables sound better because of the isolation - it all depends.

Tune dem - let the customer decide how they want to evaluate hi-fi.

Our turntables are better engineered than our competitors - if your competitors are Fisher Price, true. If they are Pioneer Exclusive, no.

Directional speaker cables - I've never heard any difference. It's an AC signal of unknown absolute phase.

Ivor T designed / developed the LP12 - Hamish Robertson did almost all of it and he copied other existing products.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Ask the ghost of "Hamish" Robertson what he was like.

[_D_S_J_R_]

The LP12 is the best turntable in the world - it never was.

Source First, GIGO - even in an analogue system, speakers are more important than the amplifier. In a digital system Source First doesn't apply at all.

Single speaker demos, to the extent taken by Linn; no phones nor alarms - complete bullshit.

Direct drive turntables suffer from cogging and hunting - cheap plastic ones maybe, properly engineered ones, no.

Suspended turntables sound better because of the isolation - it all depends.

Tune dem - let the customer decide how they want to evaluate hi-fi.

Our turntables are better engineered than our competitors - if your competitors are Fisher Price, true. If they are Pioneer Exclusive, no.

Directional speaker cables - I've never heard any difference. It's an AC signal of unknown absolute phase.

Ivor T designed / developed the LP12 - Hamish Robertson did almost all of it and he copied other existing products.

In an analogue system, the source is king. get it wrong and it doesn't matter how good the speakers are, they won't give their full potential, sorry. Done far too many hundreds of dems proving just that! of course you don't take the concept to extreme, but challenge this concept at at your peril.

Many direct drives, especially mid priced ones did suffer terrible cogging or servo-hunting, only tolerated in the infamous godawful Matsushita OEM motor because 1, many listeners are tone deaf and 2, tracking weights were aimed at 1g or so back then. Anything over 2g and the wow was audible!

Suspended turntables did work well with many forms of siting back then. It wasn't until the later 80's that properly sited direct drives could begin to show what they could really do (mid-bass colouration results if siting is ignored on these). Don't knock the AR deck, which even in its early days was a triumph, even the clunky tonearm was loads better than current audio people think.

Tune dem - don't you lot hum along with the melodies/harmonies or sing along with a song? Oh well - must be mad me then... NVA amps pass the tune dem with consumate ease too - cough...

Linn engineered the main bearings to high standards originally, and the platters originally, given time to 'rest' between machining operations, were very 'true' in the early days before production runs could mess this up. Look at a typical mid 70's Technics casting, with the strobe creeping up and down the platter as it rotates... In the 80's, they started their record company, had access to proper master grade recordings and although prices shot up and it took too long, this experience helped mould their future analogue and digital sources when everyone else to a large degree, designed what they 'thought' was a good sound, but with no reference at all!

SOME cables are clearly directional and sadly, I can't sit you down and prove it to you. NVA cables don't seem to mind I admit, but I have interconnects here which I could show you. Also, the horrible QED SA speaker cable was incredibly directional and so easy to demonstrate how odd the sound could be if one of a pair was reversed! We recommended running it with the writing to the amp - less edgy but that's not saying much I agree. I couldn't give a shit if the signal is AC, DC, a combination of both or otherwise, we could prove it with some once popular wires and we're not talking balanced here, where most differences null out, noise and distortion is lower reportedly (and measurably) even in short runs it seems and cables often better designed with less oddities - perhaps!

Hamish bloody Robertson didn't design all of the RD11, THORENS did with the TD150 (this based on the superior suspension layout but flimsy AR model) and the RD11 was a blue-printed heavily beefed up version of the TD150. Same size top plate, same spring positions, same size platters to a thou or two and same basic gearing from motor pulley to platter size and to this day, a TD150 chassis 'sounds' even better when dropped onto a Linn LP12 plinth, which it fits exactly apart from the arm-board width! Oh, you lot would be thrilled had Ivor not taken this design concept over, as the RD11 would have died a death after a few years. Than heavens his loud boasting gave others cause to improve their decks, or if they were better to start with (I think some continental heavyweights were better in the early days), they started to 'listen' better in the refinement of their designs.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

The bearing was Castle Engineering, nothing to do with Linn. Castle Engineering were bearing specialist doing a lot of the MOD precision work, absolutely nothing to do with Ivor, it was his dads staff who did the work. The problem was that they did the work for an order from Hamish and then they patented it for themselves, which is dubious if not criminal. That was what the court case was about that Hamish sadly got pissed before it and messed up in court and lost something he should have won.

Ivor couldn't design his way out of a paper bag, and even his famed ears were bullshit as later product showed. The company was born, created, flourished, dominated on Ivor as a marketing man NOTHING ELSE, and when he left due to illness they fecked it up and nearly throwing his work away so he had to go back and sort it out.

[Lindsayt]

Who designed the Linn Isobarik?

Whoever it was, didn't have a clue about good speaker design.

And the joke of it, is that magazines like Popular Hi-fi rated Briks as the best speakers you could buy in 1982 in their Buying Guide.

I am more disappointed by the journalists and editors of the UK hi-fi magazines of the 1970's and 1980's than I am by Ivor T. To some extent I can understand his motivation for marketing Linn products well beyond their actual capabilities.
The magazine staff, on the other hand, had an implied duty to their readers to give reasonable consumer advice.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

It was another design stolen from Hamish Robertson. The idea was very simple, Kef produced a speaker kit for the Concerto called the Kef Kit 3, put two of them in one cabinet.

https://www.google.com/search?q=kef+kit ... 36&bih=722

[Lindsayt]

Oh great, 2 of those Kef bass drivers wired in parallel. That's going to give the amps a great time.

They're not even particularly good drivers anyway. Not compared to what JBL, Altec, EV were doing at the time.

[Nigel]

https://www.audiobanter.co.uk/uk-rec-au ... ton-2.html

Check out the later part of post 13. Actually, the whole thread is worth a read.

[CN211276]

https://www.audiobanter.co.uk/uk-rec-au ... ton-2.html

Check out the later part of post 13. Actually, the whole thread is worth a read.

Very informative link. I was unaware that Hamish's daughter was threatened with violence by Ivor. How anyone could have anything but the up most contempt for this sewer rat shark amazes me.

[Lindsayt]

Thinking about it, the Linn Isobarik is like a huge April Fool's joke.

So you have a kit version of the Concerto. Made by Kef. Who make boringly bland drivers and speakers.

And you have one drunken Scottish man. Who thinks that putting two speakers into one cabinet will sound better than one speaker in one cabinet.

And this is somehow taken on by Ivor T, who is no speaker design expert. And you end up with this thing with drivers wired in parallel. With one bass unit stuffed inside the box. And a midrange unit and tweeter firing upwards, because... well why not?

It's pretty big and square and ugly. And costs a lot. It's also low efficiency and impedance and rather amplifier fussy.

And then you have several hi-fi magazines raving about this speaker, saying it's the best speaker you can buy!

Yeah right. And spaghetti grows on trees.