Right, folks. The topic we've all been waiting to flog to death (thanks to Percorso Alternativo (a.k.a alternativeroute) for the topic suggestion :baseball
.
I have spoken to some people who deal with (and in) high-end audio equipment and all have independently expressed the view that the great success of Linn's turntables is built on slick marketing and compliant audiophile media rather than on engineering prowess or great audio dynamics or reproduction.
Their criticism is not so much that Linn TTs are not high-end (for, as I have been assured, they are not). Rather, they say that the reputation of Linn's tables outstrips their actual technical accomplishment - i.e. that the reputation of Linn's TTs is undeserved. More broadly, they are of the opinion that using suspension in any TT is misguided and that, in the case of Linn at least, if not in that of other manufacturers of suspended TTs, enthusiastically flogging suspended TTs (in the knowledge that suspensions are a bad idea, or, at least, not a good one) was a somewhat underhanded way of keeping Linn agents in work because every so often some unwitting owner (who is not an AVforumite, of course) has to call one in to retune the suspension; that, in effect, the 'hype' put out about LP12s in particular verges on a 'con'.
Although I don't own an LP12 (but have fancied them for as long as I can remember), I do own a suspended TT and find that part of its attraction is precisely all the fiddling and twiddling, but I thank the audio gods I don't have wooden floors.
Riddle me this, then, forumites: is the reputation of LP12s (or of any other suspended TT) deserved?
Saddle up, load and lock (the logical sequence) and gird your loins, boys and girls, and have at it.
:flame:
. I have spoken to some people who deal with (and in) high-end audio equipment and all have independently expressed the view that the great success of Linn's turntables is built on slick marketing and compliant audiophile media rather than on engineering prowess or great audio dynamics or reproduction.
Their criticism is not so much that Linn TTs are not high-end (for, as I have been assured, they are not). Rather, they say that the reputation of Linn's tables outstrips their actual technical accomplishment - i.e. that the reputation of Linn's TTs is undeserved. More broadly, they are of the opinion that using suspension in any TT is misguided and that, in the case of Linn at least, if not in that of other manufacturers of suspended TTs, enthusiastically flogging suspended TTs (in the knowledge that suspensions are a bad idea, or, at least, not a good one) was a somewhat underhanded way of keeping Linn agents in work because every so often some unwitting owner (who is not an AVforumite, of course) has to call one in to retune the suspension; that, in effect, the 'hype' put out about LP12s in particular verges on a 'con'.
Although I don't own an LP12 (but have fancied them for as long as I can remember), I do own a suspended TT and find that part of its attraction is precisely all the fiddling and twiddling, but I thank the audio gods I don't have wooden floors.
Riddle me this, then, forumites: is the reputation of LP12s (or of any other suspended TT) deserved?
Saddle up, load and lock (the logical sequence) and gird your loins, boys and girls, and have at it.
:flame:
