I attended my local Linn dealer's wine and cheese party demonstration of
the Klimax DS last night (Gifted Listener Audio in Centreville, VA).
Ivor Tiefenbrun himself mingled with the crowd of 30 or so (I was one
of 4 women, all of the rest of whom were spouses of the "real"
audiophiles :)) and then gave a talk and demoed some tracks on the DS.
Actually, his assistant and sidekick, Steve from Jacksonville, FL, cued
up the demo tracks via his Nokia 800 and laptop plugged into the router
with the DS on it. It was a full Linn system, very high end, with
Artikulate speakers ($43,000) all internally amped and servoed, Klimax
Kontrol preamp, and Klimax DS as source. Although the Akurate CD player
and the full Keeled LP-12 were set up on the rack, only the DS was used
as a music source. I would have loved to hear it against the full-blown
LP12 but that was not featured last night. Ivor likes to play just
little snippets of music, maybe a couple of bars, and have you actively
"listen." Steve played MP3, CD (16/44), and high rez Linn downloads
(24/96) of the same snippet. The MP3 bars of music were obviously
inferior but I had to try hard to hear a difference between CD quality
and high resolution downloads. After all, I am someone who is
well-pleased with her Squeezebox playing Apple Lossless tracks through
a Benchmark DAC! The real highlight of the evening was Ivor and his one
hour talk, ranging from theories about the evolution of our five senses
(hearing was the second to evolve, after touch but before sight, I
believe he said) to jokes about the Irish ("What is a wheelbarrow? A
device the English invented to teach the Irish to walk"--still don't
really get this one) to the future of digital audio (discs and platters
of every type are destined to disappear soon). It was a pleasure to
meet and chat with Ivor, he is quite a character and obviously a
brilliant man. I look forward to Phil's undoubtedly informative
impressions of how the Klimax DS compares to some other sources. The
music, both snippets and later some whole tracks, that the DS played
through that $$$ Linn system last night was superb, even though my own
tastes and systems at home run to tubes, vinyl, CD players, warmer
less-analytical speakers, and of course my three SB3's. Still what a
treat to spend an evening with the founder of Linn! and the food and
wine were really good too.
--Sarah
--
sc53
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