Absurdly expensive Linn Audiophile kit - Linn DS/2 and DS/3

[gridgway]

I have just had my Linn Klimax DS/2 upgraded to the latest DS/3. This means that Linn use the case from the DS/2 and put the DS/3 innards in it (technical description).

When this is done, there is an option to have the DS/2 returned in a new (lesser) case - Linn call it the Renew.

So I have two digital streamers. Most people do the Renew option to sell and help subsidise the upgrade. I have owned this kit from new and the upgrade has just come back from Linn (still boxed on my hall floor).

I only need one, so I thought I would see if there is any interest from the discerning folk of DDK for either of them.

And now the prices...

The DS/2 Renews seem to be priced at about £3,800 on ebay. I'm going to be paying 10% fees there, so I'd start at about £3,400 here. I might have some wiggle room there.

The full-fat DS/3 retails new at £15,800 - yes! http://www.signals.uk.com/wp-content/up ... 016-UK.pdf

So that's much harder to value. I think it's £10k, but happy to consider offers!

Cheers
Graham

[left4dead]

Can't believe Linn have a system called the 'Sneaky'!

GLWS.

[gridgway]

I have in fact got a sneaky DS in the dining room. It sounds awesome!

[Gary71]

Excuse me for asking... Explain this to me... digital source, of variable quality streaming, to which this box connects (or your NAS) does D/A conversion and puts out a analogue signal to your pre-amp...

And £15k?

Some may judge my own audio kit as excessive, so I guess I should judge either, but this must be way up the scale of diminishing returns!


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[gridgway]

Schoolboy error

digital source, of variable quality streaming

[Ashley James]

ABX testing is shunned by Hi Fi enthusiasts. It's infallible and we used it.

[Mike]

...and here's me struggling to justify spending 600 odd quid on a sub-woofer for the Sonos system!

[Gary71]

Schoolboy error

digital source, of variable quality streaming

Respect for keeping the source clean. I'm trying to educate my children but failing presently.

What do you use (other than full quality rips of CDs etc) ?

[gridgway]

I am a bit old fashioned! I use flacs from my CDs.
I also rip to MP3 for the lower quality uses around the house, most rooms have streamers. Then there is in the cars, traveling on planes etc.

I want to move to a streaming service but it needs to work on all my systems lossless and lossy. I think Tidal is close.

I think I have the biggest range in price of streamer from the DS3 at its £16k magnificence down to a raspberry pi and DAC at about £70!!

All good fun!

Graham

[Ashley James]

I use Apple downloads and have for years, they sound as good as you hear compared with anything either on my active speakers or my HD800s, so as good a reference as you can have.

However hi fi enthusiasts especially Pacific Rim ones happily spend over £100k on their systems and then pay for "high resolution recordings", which I think is bonkers because the purpose of the best replay system is get the most from your preferred recordings and then might be a hundred years old or not that well produced.

[gridgway]

I think it's very much about what you can afford and what you want to afford. In the past I was a sleeping partner in a high end hifi business. That made having nice hifi significantly more affordable!

I have spent many hours listening and trying to decide if I could tell the difference! I decided that it was a game of marginal gains. So having all the components to be very high end did make a difference.

But I love listening to music. My system would probably cost 50k to do now. But whether I'm listening to that, or listening to mp3s on my phone its great!

So.... Anyone want a linn digital streamer?

Graham

[Gary71]

Just look at it as some free bumps

Totally agree about can and want to afford. We all know a cheap Casio keeps better time but half of us wear an old school (even if new) automatic watch.

If you can afford it you do as it gives you a warm feeling.


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[anglophone1]

I am a bit old fashioned! I use flacs from my CDs.
I also rip to MP3 for the lower quality uses around the house, most rooms have streamers. Then there is in the cars, traveling on planes etc.

I want to move to a streaming service but it needs to work on all my systems lossless and lossy. I think Tidal is close.

I think I have the biggest range in price of streamer from the DS3 at its £16k magnificence down to a raspberry pi and DAC at about £70!!

All good fun!

Graham

i'm struggling to understand some/any of this- clearly I am still in dark ages!
c

[Ashley James]

Speaker as someone who has retired now but whose company designs and makes very accurate speakers used as much by professionals as serious music collectors, I'd say this covers it as well as anything.

Wine price test shows marketing at work in brain


Researchers in California have shown that you can increase a person's enjoyment of wine by just sticking a higher price on it.

In a demonstration of the power of marketing, researchers in California showed you can increase a person's enjoyment of wine by just sticking a higher price on it, according to a study released Monday.

Antonio Rangel, associate professor of economics at the California Institute of Technology, led a team to test how marketing shapes consumers' perceptions and whether it also enhances their enjoyment of a product.

They asked 21 volunteers to sample five different bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon and rate their taste preferences. The taste test was run 15 times, with the wines presented in random order.

The taste test was blind except for information on the price of the wine. Without telling the volunteers, the researchers presented two of the wines twice, once with the true price tag, and again with a fake one.

They also passed off a 90 dollar bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon as a 10 dollar bottle, and presented a five dollar bottle as one worth 45 dollars.

Aside from collecting the test subjects' impressions of the wines, the researchers scanned their brains to monitor the neural activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex -- an area of the brain believed to encode pleasure related to taste, odors and music.

The study found that inflating the price of a bottle of wine enhanced a person's experience of drinking it, as shown by the neural activity.

The volunteers consistently gave higher ratings to the more "expensive" wines.

Brain scans also showed greater neural activity in the pleasure center when they were sampling those "pricey" wines, indicating that the increased pleasure they reported was a real effect in the brain.

"It's a common belief among scientists and economists that the quality of the experience depends on the properties of the product and the state of the consumer; for example, if a consumer is thirsty or not," said Rangel.

"But what this study shows is that the brain's rewards center takes into account subjective beliefs about the quality of the experience.

"If you believe that the experience is better, even though it's the same wine, the rewards center of the brain encodes it as feeling better."

In other words, "people's beliefs about the quality of a wine affect how well it tastes for the brain," he concluded.

The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

© 2008

It's the same in my son's car restoration business. He's pretty good and got a third at Pebble Beach last year, but he has customers who've been charged a million for a quarter of a million pound job.

There's an awful lot of money around and just as there are those who endlessly penny pinch and suffer as a result, so there are needlessly expensive products around that rely on customers inability to judge these things.

[gridgway]

Ahh the audiophile debate!
I actually strongly disagree with this pejorative statement and not at all on the basis of it being about hifi!

Anyone want a digital streamer?

Graham

There's an awful lot of money around and just as there are those who endlessly penny pinch and suffer as a result, so there are needlessly expensive products around that rely on customers inability to judge these things.