- May 20, 2014
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Remember that the item I posted the pictures of was an individual customer’s order. Nobody has said that it is the standard configuration.
Presumably you are making a joke, because in a violin you want the wood to resonate. Unlike in a turntable!
The choice of Urika is down to the customers specific system requirements at time of reservation confirmation.
They already had to change the pattern on the bottom as it no longer includes the collar at that position. So they could just as easily have made three bars as four. My best guess is that they didn't want the rounded corner Keel to work with a standard Linn arm collar so they made it a four point mount. There may be something else to the interface between the collar and the Keel we don't know about. I haven't seen photos of the two items separately so who knows. I've been informed that units for our customers (including me) will start shipping in October so I should know more within about a month.
I've said this before elsewhere but for the sake of clarity here the Urika 2 is NOT a digital phono stage, it is a hybrid. It uses relay switching of resistors for loading (loading can only work with actual resistance changes). The first stage, which incorporates the majority of the gain and the treble RIAA eq, is an analog input stage, essentially the same one as in the Urika 1. The majority of the gain being done before converting to digital likely helps keep the signal high enough not to cause problems with the ADCs. Then the signal is converted into digital, the bass eq is applied, some correction of the high-frequency eq is applied and some additional gain (additional gain is also applied in the Urika 1 after eq). The correction of the treble eq is on the order of hundredths of a dB.
Linn did position the Urika 2 as an upgrade over the Urika 1. I do not find it so and I find the Lejonklou Entity 1.2 musically superior to either one, not to mention the SINGularity which is in a whole different league (as obviously it should be for the price). But, hey, if you are going to buy a $60,000 LP12, why not make it $115,000?
It seems that "lower noise and lower distortion means more music" is Linn's current mantra. Cue a banana!
Linn did position the Urika 2 as an upgrade over the Urika 1. I do not find it so and I find the Lejonklou Entity 1.2 musically superior to either one, not to mention the SINGularity which is in a whole different league (as obviously it should be for the price). But, hey, if you are going to buy a $60,000 LP12, why not make it $115,000?
It seems that "lower noise and lower distortion means more music" is Linn's current mantra. Cue a banana!
Yes, that’s a very interesting evolution in their marketing. Indeed, I’ve noticed many manufacturers today making no claims at all as to sound, which is probably very wise.
You may be an optimist - but there is no way if you cue up a banana that it's then fitting in the groove
I wonder how the Rega Naia plinth would measure using the same test. I also wonder how hardwood would compare to aluminum and Panzerholz.
I recall taptone tests being done with different hardwood plinth's and conclusions being made that certain hardwoods being more musical. Was it the more musical taptone sounding better as a plinth material?
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Be difficult to do the same test as that plinth is foam (https://www.tridentfoams.co.uk/tancast.html) with a modified carbon fibre layer bonded to it (https://haydale.com/rega-turns-to-graphene-to-improve-sound-quality/). The tech of the latter was in research labs a few years ago and only commercialised recently I think so Rega are pretty on the ball to use it. From what I can see it is purely a strength/weight advantage and I haven't the faintest what that means for the impact of the plinth for the sound!
You would assume the foam is very absorbing of vibrational energy, so it should be pretty dead, like the Panzerholz?
Haydale say this about the graphene impregnated CF stuff Rega are using:
"Mechanically Enhanced Prepreg – Component Manufacturing
Haydale has developed a range of nanomaterial enhanced prepregs for use in the manufacture of sporting goods and other component prepreg applications.
The prepreg materials have shown significant performance improvements in comparison to standard materials. By successfully embedding HDPlas© functionalised nanomaterials into polymers, prepregs with enhanced mechanical properties can be produced offering improved performance in interlaminar shear and fracture toughness."
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That was what I found in the handful of plinths I tried. The most balanced and melodic tap tone gave the most musical LP12. My main LP12 uses a special movingui plinth Chris Harban made for me which has the best tap tone I have heard from any plinth and is still the most musical LP12 I have heard.
Although there is a similarity in the tap tones of plinths that Chris made from the same wood there is still a variance from one to the next as might be expected. This was amply demonstrated to me by the plinths of one customer a fair distance away who had two LP12s and three plinths and felt his own afromosia plinth was more musical than the movingui he had bought based on my reports. Coming in a distant third was another Harban plinth made of catalox, which I had never heard of before and thought might be some kind of composite but I was assured it was wood. When asked if he had tap tested it he replied that it sounded like a bar of steel! Some time after this conversation he had me drive out to his place for a week (a full day's drive away in Virginia). I stripped his two LP12s down and found that the afromosia did indeed have a more musical tap tone than his movingui and the catalox was indeed just bad. However, his afromosia plinth was unlike any other I had seen. He was into building houses and was very into wood so he had some quite talented woodworkers he employed. He gave his original Linn afromosia plinth to one of them who completely stripped it down, put in stronger strips and blocks and trued all surfaces to very tiny tolerances - especially the top and bottom of the plinth and the tops of the strips and blocks the top plate mounts to. Then it was refinished with a much higher quality hand wiped finish (as Chris also did). It was a quite special afromosia plinth and musically unlike any other I have had my hands on. I put it on his main LP12, the movingui on his office one and he sold the catalox off.
No, no, no! You have to play the banana!You may be an optimist - but there is no way if you cue up a banana that it's then fitting in the groove
This ties in with my experience with cellos and bows. Wood can be more or less musical, and before using the wood for either, the luthier is testing the wood by tapping. I have heard the difference, and it is huge. I've always wondered why this never came up in discussions about the LP12: the plinth never really was a thing in my experience. Why are there no luthiers creating (wood for) plinths?
Also: structural analysis of old wood used in instruments proves that they change because of the sound going through it for centuries. With the LP12 turning 50, can we hear a difference between new and old in plinths?
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