Preamps with DSs

[lejonklou]

I didn't see any switch on the screen, as I connected preamps while the owner of the KDS was fiddling with config. I said "This is not as good as before" and he said "Oh, I didn't disable the digital volume". Then he did and we thought it was better. I've not tested it any further than that.

So what happens when Space is activated (and no further adjustments have been made)? This I've heard twice toggled on and off and the effect is far bigger.

On a related note: How many of you have heard what an LS-NAS does to sound quality? If you haven't, I suggest you do. What happens there is entirely inside the lossless domain.

[Ceilidh]

Hi Folks,

Regarding what happens if you "throw away bits" without dithering or filtering: If anyone would like a visual representation of some of the issues being discussed, here are a couple of MATLAB outputs (just randomly grabbed from the first page of hits when I Googled "Fourier Truncation"). They're from university course notes, and thus (ironically) aren't the easiest to follow, but hopefully they'll give a sense of things:

1) http://eecs.wsu.edu/~fischer/EE321/EE32 ... ll2012.pdf

In the above link, start with Figure 3 on page two, and work backwards to Figures 2 and then 1. The critical number in those plots is "N", which is the number of Fourier "modes" being used to draw the graphs; when you reduce N=71 (Figure 3) to N=31 (Figure 2) to N=11 (Figure 1), you're essentially throwing away "bits" (not exactly, but conceptually we're in the right ballpark).

Most people (e.g., most students), if they've never seen such graphs before, have an expectation that as you throw away the higher frequencies/modes/bits (again, we're being technically rather sloppy here), you merely lose fine detail -- e.g., an originally sharp-cornered "square wave" "should" have its corners rounded off. But as can be seen in Figures 3-2-1, that's not at all what happens. Instead, you get "digital artifacts" in the form of distortions to the original signal, which show here as wavy lines at the top of each square (in my (non-audio) field, we call that "ringing", as in the high-pitch ringing of a little bell; no idea how audio engineers refer to it). The more modes/bits/etc. you throw away, the worse it gets; hence you have to do something (e.g., filtering, or perhaps dithering) to get the waveform to behave itself.

.

2) http://www.ece.msstate.edu/~fowler/Clas ... series.pdf

Just for fun, here are some more plots (again, start with the last graph, then scan backwards to the first), all of which are trying to reproduce the dashed-line "square wave" visible in graph #1. Here you can once again see the "ringing" that ensues when one blithely throws away bits/modes/high frequencies without making any attempt to filter or dither. In addition to the ringing, however, you can also see something else interesting: note the upright "horns" at the corners of the N=27, 45, 99 plots (i.e., the corners of the square aren't a simple right angle, but instead become sharp little spikes). If you keep adding modes/bits/frequencies (i.e., if you can make "N" arbitrarily large), these spikes eventually disappear -- but there's a regime in the middle where adding modes/bits actually makes the spikes sharper. Now, I've never worked anywhere near audio, but we once had a speaker hooked up to a digital output (purely to generate troubleshooting test tones), together with an oscilloscope, and it was immediately obvious that those little spikes are not only audible, but are in fact fingernails-on-a-chalkboard unpleasant: a pure square wave sounds remarkably like an oboe, but adding those spikes made everyone want to leave the room. (If you're interested, the speaker was useful in that it quickly told us if we were heading the right direction: fingernails-on-a-blackboard = Bad; oboe = Good.)

In short, simple truncation of a Fourier series (i.e., throwing away bits) leads to audible digital artifacts, and thus (if you want something that sounds decent) you're forced to filter and/or dither.

.

3) http://eecs.wsu.edu/~fischer/EE321/EE32 ... ll2012.pdf

Actually, now that we're talking about filtering/dithering, let's do a couple more. =) Here's the first link, repeated for convenience; this time, have a look at the plots on the very last page (the "Filtered Square Wave" plots). If you want to get rid of the "ringing" digital artifacts, one option is to filter -- digitally filter. There are two examples of digital filters on that last page (with the unfiltered "ringing" square wave "input" on top, and the asymmetrical filtered "output" on the bottom). And there are two things to point out here:

A. The digital-filter outputs look a LOT like analog filter outputs (no examples here of the latter, but if you hook up square-wave input signals to various LC, RC, LRC, etc. filters, you get things that look like this (though usually with phase shifts)). I mention this because folks sometimes will claim that no digital filter can reproduce what a well-designed analog filter will do. That's actually true -- but not in the way a lot of these claimants seem to think. If we're talking about overall shape of the waveform, you can get a digital filter to reproduce pretty much any analog-filter you can think of -- and you can do so with complete repeatability (upstream of the DAC), and with complete & independent control over phase and phase shifts. That's the appeal behind digital manipulation of the audio signal (and it's pretty significant).

B. If you look in close detail, however, the digital-filter outputs are NOT as good as a clean analog output. There's still a bit of ringing as you approach the peaks and valley floors, and a nice analog filter won't show that. Getting rid of that ringing is hard (and in some ways is theoretically impossible): you can try to whack it down still further and distort your output waveform, and/or you can try to turn the ringing into non-harmonic noise via dithering. Either way, you're now in a "different" world from that of pure analog: you're dealing with a different set of issues -- and arguably one with much less of an accumulated audio-component knowledge base.

.

4) https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Sc ... 8/fig1.gif

Finally, just for completeness, the above is a figure (again, drawn randomly from a Google Image search, this time of "dithered audio waveform") showing what dithering does. The example is really coarse (the outputs from something like a DS are going to be much, much, much more finely resolved than what's shown here), but you can see that a digital signal (or rather, a digital signal with less than an infinite number of bits) is going to have "noise" in it: the noise can either be harmonic (like in the earlier examples -- and no, "harmonic" doesn't necessarily mean pleasant-sounding!), and/or it can be quasi-random (as shown here with dithering). Depending upon technique, bit-size, sampling rates, etc., this noise can be less than that shown by a real-world analog system, or it can be more; and the specific characteristics of the noise will reflect the intentions and the skill of the person tuning the system.

.

Personal Reflections

First of all, apologies in advance if anyone asks a question, and I silently never respond. =) I promised my wife (and myself) many years ago that I would stop posting things on any internet forum (just because it takes up so much time), and this current post is a special-case exception. =) As for the "why" behind the exception: I like this forum (in fact, I like it very much, and hope to someday meet the wonderful regulars who make it so exceptional), and I selfishly would like it to stay the way I remember it. Of late, there's been a lot of fighting over "digital" vs. "analog", and some of the arguments have strayed onto technologically nebulous ground. If this post helps reduce some of the passions by providing a more common frame of reference, then the time taken will have been well spent. (Conversely, if it doesn't add anything to the discussion, then apologies, and please ignore everything in the post!!)

So along those lines, here are some personal reflections (note: whereas the first part of this post covered what are more-or-less facts, what follows is personal opinion -- do please feel free to disagree, but please remember I mean well with all of it):

I. In Theory, Linn's Exakt/Space/DVC approach is in fact a "better" way of creating an audio chain -- but In Theory, it's also possible to foster universal world peace, create architecture that everybody finds attractive, and concoct Brownie Fudge Ice Cream Sundaes that are simultaneously delicious, non-fattening, of low glycemic load, and laden with Paleodiet-ratios of Omega Fatty Acids. Of the latter three (peace, buildings, brownie sundaes), well, good luck to that. =) Regarding high-end audio: the jury's still out on whether present digital technology is yet "good enough". In many respects it's a matter of execution (even independent of technological progress). And it's very much ok to disagree. But when we disagree, we should know that neither approach is "fundamentally flawed", and neither (not "even" analog) has likely come anywhere near the limits of what's possible. It'll be exciting to see both technologies improve in the years to come.

II. Digital processing for high-end audio -- even if one neglects AD/DA conversions and "hardware" problems with noise, jitter, and the like -- is not nearly so straightforward as internet pundits like to pronounce, and it's likely that very, very few people outside of a handful of small high-end audio companies have more than a clue as to the detailed challenges. Certainly nobody I've come across is posting anything of any real insight. The links I posted above come from university 1st/2nd-year introductory courses on basic Fourier analysis (something I used not for audio (which again I've no experience in), but for fluid dynamical modeling of convection in the earth's interior -- i.e., this is very fundamental stuff); and Linn's White Papers bear the marks of bright engineers gritting their teeth and watering things down and down and down until the marketing department deems it all simple enough for public consumption -- and even there (judging by posts on the Linn forum) not everyone seems to understand what they're saying. The likely challenge with high-end digital audio lies not in the basic technology (which is exceptionally well-researched already for a host of non-audio fields, with reams of fresh papers with fresh developments being published each year), but in figuring out which of the myriad of algorithms, filters, parameters, and approaches developed for other fields are best applied to the poorly-understood biomechanical requirements of human hearing and audio cognition. Put another way: the Linn guys are not idiots. Nor are the simplistic test results they've cited (probably under instruction from the Linn marketing department) at all guiding their product development (I say that not because I've ever spoken or met with the Linn engineers, but because even a first-year postgraduate student would employ far, far more sophisticated guidelines -- and first year postgraduate students are notorious for being cluelessly unemployable). What Linn is attempting is very, very tough. Whether or not they're succeeding is apparently very much open to debate. But there's nothing inherently "wrong" with the digital approach, and it's highly unlikely they're developing products on the basis of simplistic measurements.

III. Fredrik is a genius, and Analog is a singularly good place for geniuses. There's something about analog signal processing that responds to individual artistry, inspiration, and precision, in a way that somehow seems to be far less common with digital. The nearest counterpart to Fredrik whom I've personally encountered was a fellow named Misha in a robotics company where I worked. A big Russian bear of a man, sweet-tempered, soft-spoken, and seemingly possessed of 2 shirts and one pair of jeans, Misha sat alone in a double cubicle strewn with geologic strata of random "stuff". (Note: I'm not saying Fredrik is remotely like this! I've never met him, but from photos he seems young, fit, and outwardly very unlike Misha!) Most of us had no idea what he actually did with the bulk of his time, but periodically there'd be a problem nobody could solve, and then the suggestion would be to "Go talk to Misha". It didn't matter if it was a little summer intern task, or (literally) a complex maddening week-long random failure that had stymied a team of 4 MIT / Carnegie Mellon-trained electrical engineers: Misha invariably fixed the problem in a matter of minutes or hours, often (literally) using foil, paper clips, and stray wire scraps lying on the top layer of his desk.

Analog geniuses are not like you or me (or at least, certainly not like me): as far as I can tell, they look at a circuit or a whatwhosit and somehow "see" electrons flowing about, with magnetic fields shimmering all around and stray leakage currents sneaking their way into forbidden places. And then their minds somehow visualize how a shift of a cable, a placement of a damper, a subtle tweak here, here, but not at all over there, will make everything work so much better. This is a rare talent. Rarer still is to combine this talent with a keen ear for music and an inherent sense for business, sales, and customer service. But a person who inexplicably has all that, can do very, very well indeed. Thus it's not at all inconceivable that a lone individual can come out with products that outperform the best creations from the best engineering teams in the best audio companies in the world. High end audio is not yet fully a craft. At some point in the (perhaps distant, perhaps medium) future, the biophysicists will discern the full workings of the ear (there's a lot of bizarre active signal processing going on there, from what my former colleagues tell me), and the cognitive psychologists will work out just what human "hearing" means for the brain. And when that eventually happens, high-end audio can be more of a craft -- one approachable by large engineering teams. But at the moment, with so little understood about how the human ear & brain converts a waveform into perceived sounds and moving music, high-end audio is still very much an art. So artists can do amazing things with high-end audio, particularly if they're patient (and to play with national stereotypes, my goodness the Scandinavians are known for their patience!), gifted, and possessed of more than a little true genius. =)

IV. I've never heard any of these systems (neither Lejonklou nor digital Linn), and I've no pony in this race. But I believe in what Fredrik is doing, and I also believe in Linn. Analog is a singular playground for artists/engineers/technicians, one with decades of accumulated wisdom, that has grown not with the oscilloscope and test bench, but instead with what works with human hearing and human appreciation of sound and music (note, it'd be interesting someday to test whether other creatures react to audio reproduction in the same way we do). Analog is the de facto standard, and with people like Fredrik developing it, it will continue to improve. Digital is (in this realm) still new: it has "quirks" whose interactions with human hearing are not yet fully understood, and it has many "advantages" of which some will prove to really matter, and some will not. Where it will ultimately go is not at all clear, but the possibilities are very intriguing.

Neither technology is really at odds with the other, and in the long run we're probably going to end up with a hybrid of the two -- not only in technology, but in culture and approach. To raise a silly example, suppose that Linn's Phil Hobbs hired Fredrik as a (highly paid!) consultant, to oversee all the listening tests and product development and tuning: if the engineers produced outputs that showed various signal differences between Sagutun 1 vs Sagutun 2, and if Fredrik could see the waveform results of the various tuning tweaks he tried and hears, would his artistic genius begin to "see" how different waveform quirks elicit "flow", vs. "pace", vs etc. in recorded music? If that happens, he can begin sketching out to the development engineers: "It's doing this, which deadens the music. I want the attack to go like so...." What would happen then?

Or, say that Linn (with or without Fredrik's help) works out what's needed for digital processing to elicit the musicality of highest-end audio (or let's assume they already have): there are still pesky Digital-to-Analog conversions; there's still amplification; and there are still sneaky ground loops and emissions leaks to mess up the carefully-honed signal. To "fix" all that, you still need a Fredrik or Misha -- a genius who can see the electrons and guide them to where they should go.

I guess what I'm saying is that we're at a very exciting time in high-end audio. Digital processing is (because of non-audio fields) becoming increasingly powerful and well-understood, so we are nearing (or have already crossed) the threshold where the inherent problems with digital (e.g., "ringing" from truncation) can begin to be overcome by digital's inherent advantages (e.g., repeatability, phase control, clearly defined -- and lowering -- digital "noise"). But to make Digital work, the industry has to tap into the learnings that the Analog world has laboriously assembled over the years: what does the human ear and brain respond to; what makes music "musical"? This knowledge transfer is going to be really, really tough. But it'll be exciting. And the end-result (I think) is going to be a "combined arms" approach that (hopefully) will have enough artistry and science to satisfy everyone. =)

.

Sorry to ramble on so, and time to get back to work. Best wishes to all of you, and hope someday to meet you denizens of the finest audio forum in the world. =)

Cheers, Ceilidh

.

[matss]

Thank you Ceilidh! One of the best post on a forum I have ever read.

Yes (I hope I interpret your own view in the post correctly), I also believe we now can start to see some potential benefits of digital signal processing even for high end audio. Maybe Exakt together with others are hinting in that direction. So I ask myself, why not take advantage of all the world's efforts being spent in developing digital signal processing capabilities?

Still, to me digital circuitry is very much analog in its execution. You still need to shuffle around electrons to the right places in order to transport the "lossless" digital information from one place to another. Misha, Fredrik and other analog geniuses will always be in demand to extract maximum performance level even from a digital system. I'm sorry if anything in my previous posts has come across as if I think digital is inherently flawless. Nothing could be further from my truth. I'm just curious to understand more about what these strokes of magic really is about - without assuming and guessing.

BR, Mats

[ThomasOK]

Lovely post Ceilidh and good to see you back (and to see why you've been absent). Fully understandable - posting on the forums definitely takes up too much time. I can justify it as it is part of my work and I believe at least some of what I post helps some people. (And I certainly stirred things up when I started the threads about Linn discontinuing analog preamps!) Would love to meet a number of the people on the forum, getting us all together and on the same continent at the same time might take some doing but it would surely be fun.

Yes, Fredrik is a genius. And considering what is happing in Hi-Fi electronics right now, not just the advance of mostly or all-digital systems from companies like Meridian, Linn, Dynaudio and others, but also the pandering to the richest 1% that seems to take up the time of more and more "high-end" designers, I don't think there could be a better time for him to have become active.

I really enjoyed your post and the way it points out that what is going on behind the scenes in digital music data transport and reproduction is vastly more complex than we are aware (as is also true of analog musical transport and reproduction) and there is endless scope for both improvement and degradation. As always, intelligence, cleverness and careful listening are necessary for musical reproduction to move forward. Lack any one of those three and it is easy to go astray.

[donuk]

Great post Ceilidh.
Don't go away
Don - and if you are ever in sunny downtown York.........

[rowlandhills]

Nice post Ceilidh, and good to see both the theoretical side with links to factual academic data, and also the more personal, subjective perspective.

[Spannko]

In response to my question about what happens inside the Volume Control Module when it is switched on/off and the volume is adjusted, murrays posted:

"The only thing that changes is the volume setting (from 80 to whatever the start-up volume is). Dithering is always on and the algorithm does not change with volume setting."

Great. Thanks for clarifying this from Linn. Now we know.

So, what else is going on to explain the clear improvement in sound quality some of us experience when the DS volume control is set to off in Konfig, besides seeing the switch toggle on the PC screen?

Although it's early days, I have to admit that I'm not finding the sound or musicality of the KDS/2 directly into a power amp to be objectionable at all. I'm not suggesting that it's better than using a pre-amp (it's too soon for that), but it's much better than I expected.

[HIDDENSYSTEMS]

What's the rest of your system spunko out of interest? I know whizz flagged better than average results with KDS/2 DVC so is there an analogue "Ghost in the Machine" somewhere?

Have to say that that your post after Ceilidh great post caught my late night interest

[Ron The Mon]

I've never heard any of these systems (neither Lejonklou nor digital Linn)... But I believe in what Fredrik is doing, and I also believe in Linn...

I like this forum (in fact, I like it very much, and hope to someday meet the wonderful regulars who make it so exceptional)...

Fredrik is a genius,... There's something about analog signal processing that responds to individual artistry, inspiration, and precision, in a way that somehow seems to be far less common with digital...

Ceilidh,
What you wrote in total was a great post; informative, enjoyable to read, understandable, inquisitive, and positive, However... part of what Fredrik posted just a few minutes before you was of far greater value yet I believe few even caught it.

He wrote: "How many of you have heard what an LS-NAS does to sound quality? If you haven't, I suggest you do. What happens there is entirely inside the lossless domain."

THAT is the true value of this forum!!!

You must first stream before you NAS, which seems to put less importance on the real source. Once you actually hear what an "LS-NAS" does to the music, you will be sold on that dictate. I put the quotes around LS-NAS as I don't have a full-on version, and I don't think that is necessary. I have also been experimenting with improved hardware, software, supports, electrical, grounding, RF, etc. for the NAS, which prove to me what is really the most important hierarchy of the digital audio signal: The Source. My new mantra for both analog and digital is "Source-First and it is NOT in the speakers!"

Fredrik is not a genius. Neither are the members here. We are brought together on this forum by three factors; high intelligence, a very high attention to detail, and most importantly the desire to improve our enjoyment of music at home using tune-dem as the main tool.

I guess what I'm saying is that we're at a very exciting time in high-end audio.

Until you hear a Klimaxed LP12 amped by Lejonklou's best, you have no idea!

Ron The Mon

P.S.
I assume you are in the United States. I would suggest sending your speaker cables to Tom O'Keefe or buying lengths of the same cable and having Tom cut them to 2.48 meters and terminating them with the proper terminals as well as soldering to Fredriks' temperature and solder. Once you hear that improvement in your hi-fi, imagine what such "genius" source-first improvements will wrought.

[Chapelier]

I feel illiterate, but what exactly is a LS-NAS?

[Charlie1]

How does the KDS2/power amp combo deal with the problem of impedance matching? I recall Fredrik stating this was one of the main benefits of a pre-amp. Is it still there or does the DVC make it redundant?

Another way of answering this question might be to compare KDS2 vs KDS2/pre-amp at volume 80, particularly those that prefer a pre-amp at lower volumes. Do they still prefer a pre-amp? If so, then perhaps the DVC isn't the main issue for them.

[Spannko]

How does the KDS2/power amp combo deal with the problem of impedance matching? I recall Fredrik stating this was one of the main benefits of a pre-amp. Is it still there or does the DVC make it redundant?

Another way of answering this question might be to compare KDS2 vs KDS2/pre-amp at volume 80, particularly those that prefer a pre-amp at lower volumes. Do they still prefer a pre-amp? If so, then perhaps the DVC isn't the main issue for them.

I also wonder about impedance matching Charlie1. The input/output impedances differ between the DS's, Kontrols and Power amps, therefore, as you rightly point out, we may not be just removing a pre-amp from the system - we may be changing the way the input/output circuits work too. I'm not sure how this would affect musicality - I'll leave that to those who know what they're talking about!

Many moons ago, I was asked to listen to some circuits put together by an amateur amplifier designer. One of the things I was asked to listen to was the effect of changing input/output impedances. From what I can remember (it was 20 years ago!), the impedances did affect the amps tune playing ability. BUT, I'm referring to a basic DIY transistor design based on valve amp topologies. A competently designed commercial product could work very differently indeed!

Ah! I've just read your post again and I think you may be referring to the difference between active and passive pre-amps. I'm guessing that the DS's "pre-amp" would still be considered active because the Volume Control Module is ultimately followed by an active output amplifier.

I've listened to the KDS/2 v KDS/2 + pre-amp as you suggest. Initially, I thought I heard a difference, then I got totally confused and thought it sounded the same! The problem I'm having is that the DS is still running in, therefore I'm still not getting the musicality I expect. Consequently, my tune dem's have been a bit rushed - I've got too many other things to be getting on with! When the DS has settled down, I'll devote a good half a day to tune demming it properly.

[Spannko]

I've never heard any of these systems (neither Lejonklou nor digital Linn)... But I believe in what Fredrik is doing, and I also believe in Linn...

I like this forum (in fact, I like it very much, and hope to someday meet the wonderful regulars who make it so exceptional)...

Fredrik is a genius,... There's something about analog signal processing that responds to individual artistry, inspiration, and precision, in a way that somehow seems to be far less common with digital...

Ceilidh,
What you wrote in total was a great post; informative, enjoyable to read, understandable, inquisitive, and positive, However... part of what Fredrik posted just a few minutes before you was of far greater value yet I believe few even caught it.

He wrote: "How many of you have heard what an LS-NAS does to sound quality? If you haven't, I suggest you do. What happens there is entirely inside the lossless domain."

THAT is the true value of this forum!!!

You must first stream before you NAS, which seems to put less importance on the real source. Once you actually hear what an "LS-NAS" does to the music, you will be sold on that dictate. I put the quotes around LS-NAS as I don't have a full-on version, and I don't think that is necessary. I have also been experimenting with improved hardware, software, supports, electrical, grounding, RF, etc. for the NAS, which prove to me what is really the most important hierarchy of the digital audio signal: The Source. My new mantra for both analog and digital is "Source-First and it is NOT in the speakers!"

Fredrik is not a genius. Neither are the members here. We are brought together on this forum by three factors; high intelligence, a very high attention to detail, and most importantly the desire to improve our enjoyment of music at home using tune-dem as the main tool.

I guess what I'm saying is that we're at a very exciting time in high-end audio.

Until you hear a Klimaxed LP12 amped by Lejonklou's best, you have no idea!

Ron The Mon

P.S.
I assume you are in the United States. I would suggest sending your speaker cables to Tom O'Keefe or buying lengths of the same cable and having Tom cut them to 2.48 meters and terminating them with the proper terminals as well as soldering to Fredriks' temperature and solder. Once you hear that improvement in your hi-fi, imagine what such "genius" source-first improvements will wrought.

True. However, until you hear a KDS on my personally designed and optimised for DS support, you also have no idea what the KDS can do!

PS Please remove me from the "high intelligence" group. I don't think I'd qualify, lol!!! Although, I think I'd qualify for the other two groups - just!

[Ozzzy189]

Harmonhylian is considered to be the best support available, if we apply the same logic as spannko, (careful spelling and checking auto correct, lol) then surely none of us unless we have mimer 3 harmoni, haven't heard a kds at its best?

[Charlie1]

How does the KDS2/power amp combo deal with the problem of impedance matching? I recall Fredrik stating this was one of the main benefits of a pre-amp. Is it still there or does the DVC make it redundant?

Another way of answering this question might be to compare KDS2 vs KDS2/pre-amp at volume 80, particularly those that prefer a pre-amp at lower volumes. Do they still prefer a pre-amp? If so, then perhaps the DVC isn't the main issue for them.

I also wonder about impedance matching Charlie1. The input/output impedances differ between the DS's, Kontrols and Power amps, therefore, as you rightly point out, we may not be just removing a pre-amp from the system - we may be changing the way the input/output circuits work too. I'm not sure how this would affect musicality - I'll leave that to those who know what they're talking about!

Many moons ago, I was asked to listen to some circuits put together by an amateur amplifier designer. One of the things I was asked to listen to was the effect of changing input/output impedances. From what I can remember (it was 20 years ago!), the impedances did affect the amps tune playing ability. BUT, I'm referring to a basic DIY transistor design based on valve amp topologies. A competently designed commercial product could work very differently indeed!

Ah! I've just read your post again and I think you may be referring to the difference between active and passive pre-amps. I'm guessing that the DS's "pre-amp" would still be considered active because the Volume Control Module is ultimately followed by an active output amplifier.

I've listened to the KDS/2 v KDS/2 + pre-amp as you suggest. Initially, I thought I heard a difference, then I got totally confused and thought it sounded the same! The problem I'm having is that the DS is still running in, therefore I'm still not getting the musicality I expect. Consequently, my tune dem's have been a bit rushed - I've got too many other things to be getting on with! When the DS has settled down, I'll devote a good half a day to tune demming it properly.

Thanks Spannko. A friend's KDS2 took over 200 hours to run in, if that's any help.

I wasn't specifically referring to active vs passive pre-amps, mostly cos I don't really know what they are - I guess that rules me out too ;)

[Ozzzy189]

My more detailed reply after post number 2 in this thread has been put on hold indefinitely after reading ceilidhs post. Lol. That was a fantastic post there.

[Music Lover]

Thanks Spannko. A friend's KDS2 took over 200 hours to run in, if that's any help.

I have upgraded my KDS twice (not counting the Dynamik) and it's 3 months playing 24/7.
My KDS/2 is still improving after 2 months. (and playing 24/7 as I alwas do)
Performance goes up...it goes down, but overall the performance is better over time

[Charlie1]

Thanks ML. I've not spoken to him in a while, so perhaps he's in the same situation and it's continued to improve (overall).

Another thumbs up to Ceilidh for his detailed post. It's a shame we don't hear from him more often, but I am particularly impressed by his strength of mind to stay away for such long periods, thereby keeping his wife happy :)

[Spannko]

Harmonhylian is considered to be the best support available, if we apply the same logic as spannko, (careful spelling and checking auto correct, lol) then surely none of us unless we have mimer 3 harmoni, haven't heard a kds at its best?

I agree with you, Ozzy. I haven't heard a Harmonhylian, but I'm sure those that have are very aware of the shortcomings produced when using anything else. If I had to, I could listen to my system with Linn Black's, but I would always be aware that my system was capable of being so much more enjoyable with Silver's.

[Ozzzy189]

Where does it ever end though? That could be said for anything and most folks with Linn or Lejonklou or both seem to use linn Silvers but there's better out there. Apparently.

[beck]

So what is going on when a hifi reviewer from hifi critic notice a degration of the sound from the klimax exact system when lowering the volume?

I am talking about the review that can be found on the Linn webside.

[u252agz]

Re. LS-NAS

If someone could assemble the best ( ie most musical) NAS with currently available hardware , using Tune Dem, I am sure there would be plenty of buyers, other than myself.

As components go out of production the research and development team would simply use the best available components at the time.

Calling Fredrik.

Leave the streaming devices to Linn and give everyone the best available source for digital music, as well as the best preamp and power amp.

[donuk]

http://www.lejonklou.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2644

I am surprised that nobody commented on this NAS which I placed on this forum some weeks ago. It is getting a following in the UK.
Try to get to hear one.

Donuk beautiful downtown York

[ThomasOK]

I feel illiterate, but what exactly is a LS-NAS?

It is short for Linnofil Super NAS. Linnofil is a longstanding member here who spent over two years testing everything having to do with a NAS for musical performance using the Tune Method. He then created a thread where he selflessly shared the information on what components were the most musical: Motherboads, SSD drives, power supplies, RAM boards, SATA cables, etc. were all covered in detail. An example of the thoroughness was the note that even though the MB and the PS unit were both designed for use in a fanless design, the music sounded better with a specific fan plugged into the CPU fan connector than with no fan but was less musical with it plugged into the chassis fan connector. This was expanded on with 20 pages of additional information by others who built their own units and tried different components.

As Fredrik mentioned it does indeed make a substantial musical improvement and the change in performance of each component is indeed audible despite the supposed lossless nature of the data it is transporting.

See this link for more information:
http://www.lejonklou.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1596

See also this summary of information with additional links on the importance of items to feed a DS and which have been found to perform the best:
http://www.lejonklou.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=586

Re. LS-NAS

If someone could assemble the best ( ie most musical) NAS with currently available hardware , using Tune Dem, I am sure there would be plenty of buyers, other than myself.

As components go out of production the research and development team would simply use the best available components at the time.

Calling Fredrik.

Leave the streaming devices to Linn and give everyone the best available source for digital music, as well as the best preamp and power amp.

u252agz see above. I did investigate the possibility of making these units in the US but the discontinuation of the motherboard, with severe limitations on availability, the discontinuation of the preferred SSD (although they are pretty easy to come by) and the difficulty of finding a readily available appropriate case has put this on hold for the time being. I will custom make units if desired as parts become available but it would take some time to accumulate them.

Where does it ever end though? That could be said for anything and most folks with Linn or Lejonklou or both seem to use linn Silvers but there's better out there. Apparently.

I wouldn't bet on that. I have heard some pretty fancy and expensive cables but nothing that is as musical in my system as Linn Silvers.

It is true in my experience that you haven't heard all your components can do until you have heard them on Mimer K and/or Tor Harmoni racks. As I'm still playing around a bit with the configurations of the racks I can't quite say where it ends yet. But I might be getting close?

[u252agz]

Thomas

Please put me on the list for an LS NAS if the parts become available.

When I recently asked my local Linn dealer to make the LS NAS - we had the same problem of key parts being no longer available- consequently I abandoned the project.

Hence my suggestion that as each component becomes unavailable the Lejonklou LS NAS team use Tune dem to find the next best component and market that one.

I am sure unavailability of electronics is a problem with all high end Hi Fi manufacturers - and they must have to replace suppliers from time to time.

It would be really great to have a top quality NAS produced by those gifted with good ears for Tune Dem.


Donuk

I would prefer a NAS developed by the sort of serious tune demmers that one finds on this forum - i am sure it will outperform the ones currently on the market and be better value. Just like Sagatun/ Tundra.