SHOP NEWS

Linn Klimax DS
[ 08th October 2007 ]

I've been involved in demonstrating and selling HiFi since 1979, some 28 years now. In that time there have been many changes.
The dominance of LP records spearheaded by Linn's LP12 Turntable first introduced in 1973, held supreme in the UK for many years and introduced many people to the delights of music that sounded real in their homes. It changed peoples direction and changed their mood and instead of watching television on an evening they were listening to music instead.
The introduction of CDs starting in 1982 was first seen by us as a shop, then next to London Bridge, as clever and convenient but a sonic downgrade as the sound quality of CDs we then considered inferior to that of the vinyl record. Many of our customers agreed with us, but however, most of the world disagreed, and the triumph of CDs as a mass medium over the years has been self evident.
Many of our present customers, still feel the same way about CDs and to them records still sound better and they have therefore continued to enhance and improve on the sound of their vinyl collection with significant turntable, tonearm and cartridge upgrades. However, new vinyl records, with limited releases are hard to come by, and vinyl lovers are often nowadays obliged to purchase records second hand to swell their collections. They can feel stuck in a time warp.

At the same time the sound quality of CD players has steadily improved with some wonderful products that we have demonstrated and sold from this shop from Linn, Naim, Rega, Arcam and many others. The development of HiFi has continued apace.

In recent years the evolution of computers and digital information has spawned the introduction of Apple's iPod with iTunes software that has swept the world with a combination of wonderful new technology combined with great convenience. The MP3 compression encoding generally used on iTunes has allowed huge libraries of music to be carried around in a pocket. It has changed the way that millions of young, and not so young people listen to music. It has been a triumph of convenience over ultimate sound quality that many of us, including myself, are happy to enjoy.

For many younger people the iPod has become their reference standard, and with downloads of music and video sharply increasing, traditional CD and Record Stores are declining fast. In 2006, in the North American market, 32% of all downloads of music and video were of products never ever issued on either CD or DVD. Times, they are indeed a'changing!

Linn Klimax DS

The reason that I am writing to you as an old and valued customer is that very occasionally something comes along in our HiFi world which has the capacity to shift the culture yet again. In my view the Klimax DS is such a product.

Linn believes that it is more revolutionary than the the LP12 turntable or CD12 CD player. And that it currently re-redefines the amount of information that it is possible to extract from CD and other high definition download sources.

The Linn Klimax DS is a Digital Streaming Processor which will in future become a new breed of HiFi interface. It's one of the few of its kind and is the first on the market to offer truly HiFi sound quality.

Put in simple terms it takes the sound from CDs (or downloaded digital music that can be at full studio master quality) which has been transfered to hard disc and streams it uncompressed to your amplifier and then to the loudspeakers.

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