Our partners
This page contains what our partners have to say about their beliefs and gear, and what music represents for them.
Buying Advice
Buying high fidelity equipment is very different to buying a dishwasher or a refrigerator. Provided the latter works, everything is fine. The situation is far more complex with hi-fi, which has to do much more than perform a mundane task.
A hi-fi system has to allow recorded music to excite your senses and fire your imagination: it must satisfy you intellectually and emotionally. That is why you will not find Naim Audio for sale in any superstores or internet e-tailers.
Naim products can only be bought from specialist, independent, bricks and mortar retailers who have the requisite knowledge and training to provide the facilities and support such sophisticated equipment deserves.
All Naim retailers have demonstration lounges in which you can sit and appreciate the performance of what you are intending to buy. The store will be able to let you hear, for example, how a system performs with a selection of different loudspeakers. They will let you compare the performance of Naim with other manufacturers' equipment so that you can be absolutely certain you are making the right choice. Think of it as the audio equivalent of taking a car for a truly meaningful test drive rather than the usual 'once around the block'.
This process ensures that you finish up with what is, effectively, a completely bespoke system, tailored and tuned to suit your requirements. The retailer will then professionally fit the equipment in your home: we insist on this not only to ensure that the system is safely and correctly installed but also to guarantee that its performance is optimised in your home environment.
Upgrade Path
Naim systems have always offered their buyers a clearly defined and cost effective upgrade path whenever the owner decided that that they wanted even greater performance from their hi-fi.
We pioneered our modular approach to system building in our early days and have been refining it now for more than 30 years. It is impossible to run out of incremental improvements you can make to your system until you reach the heady heights of the ultimate 500 Series reference system.
The simplest upgrade is to change, say, the CD player or preamplifier for a more sophisticated model in the range. However, all Naim preamplifiers, along with several other components, can have their performance enhanced through a range of independent power supply units. Simply adding a supply, or moving up one model in the power supply hierarchy, delivers readily appreciable gains in the musical performance of those components. Similar improvements are available for Naim CD players and HDX Hard Disk player. The recent introduction of our first stand-alone digital to analogue converter, the DAC, opens up the available upgrade options further for those sources with a digital output.
As well as developing our own support furniture - the Fraim system - to enable Naim electronics to perform optimally, our R&D department has been constantly improving even the performance of the cables that connect the system components. This endeavour resulted in the stunning Hi-Line interconnect and Power-Line mains cable, each offering a significant performance upgrade. Both of these are unique in their mechanical design, which aims to repel any spurious vibrations that attempt to disturb the sensitive electronics by entering the case through the cable connections. As always, we optimise even the tiniest detail in order to extract the maximum performance from our systems.
As owners move up the upgrade path, adding to or replacing components in their system, the stellar performance and reliability of Naim equipment guarantees that resale prices remain healthy, which helps foster and maintain a worthwhile and buoyant previously-owned market. Indeed Naim products command some of the best residual values of any Hi-Fi brand, reassuring for those investing in Naim for the first time as they plan their journey along the upgrade path.
source: www.naimaudio.com
True to the music
You know how much pleasure music brings to your life. It can pick you up. It can calm you down. It can move your feet and stimulate your mind. Because Linn believe in being true to the music, the focus has always been on developing systems that reproduce sound as faithfully as possible to the original recording. Over the decades our experience has given us a clear understanding of how sound travels from recording to loudspeakers, and an appreciation that the sound reproduction process is only as strong as its weakest link.
Only music and movies reproduced to the highest standards can bring you lasting pleasure, so at Linn accurate reproduction always comes first.
All you have to do is listen
Choosing a good system has nothing to do with specifications or complicated feature lists.
Linn has always believed the best way to select a system is by listening to the different options and letting your ears decide - if it sounds better, it is better.
Built to last
We know that once a customer buys a Linn system, the longer they have it the more they appreciate it, the more their taste in music expands and the more prepared they are to invest in its maintenance and development. This is one of the reasons a Linn system retains so much more value and lasts so much longer than anything else. It is possible to enjoy music in a genre with which you are already familiar and which you have learned to appreciate, even on a pretty poor system, but that level of sound reproduction is not good enough to help a country music person enjoy opera or vice versa. A good system will enable the listener to make this kind of transition and expand their taste in many dramatic ways because all music has merit. Ivor Tiefenbrun
Linn's philosophy of making systems that are modular, expandable and upgradeable ensures you can develop your system over a lifetime, gradually improving its performance.
Customers who love music have built our business, so we look after them. We continually improve our products and make it easy for them to upgrade their systems if they wish.
You can start with a system that is right for you today and, upgrading step by step, improve and expand your system to build up to the very best.
Because Linn have a commitment to progress through learning, simplification and improvement, we are continually looking for ways to further develop our products.
And always to the benefit of both our new and existing customers.
Totally integrated
At Linn manufacturing is an integrated process, from product design, all the way through to after-sales service.
All aspects of Linn's products are designed in-house. All the key processes, from casting molten metal and machining precision components to manufacturing advanced and complex electronic circuits, are controlled by Linn people.
The ability to design a module in the morning and test it in manufacturing in the afternoon enables swift problem resolution.
It means new breakthroughs or improvements can be implemented quickly across the product range.
The freedom and independence this creates have enabled Linn to make an astonishing commitment to sound quality. An organisation that puts customers first completes a truly integrated capability.
Attention to detail
Linn believe everything can be improved by human interest and attention to detail. So the same person builds, tests, and packs a complete product from start to finish.
This ensures a standard of construction and a sense of pride and involvement that is just not possible on a production line.
They take all the time necessary to ensure every detail is correct.
Only then will the person responsible for building the product personally sign their name on the back and pack it for despatch.
Every product can be tracked all the way from that individual to the customer, anywhere in the world.
A single-minded philosophy guaranteeing outstanding product performance.
We love music
The people who work at Linn love music. We even have our own record label, Linn Records.
This recording expertise adds a vital dimension to our business, allowing us to check, compare and monitor music at every stage of the process from artist to listener.
The performances captured by Linn Records have won worldwide acclaim for artistic and recording quality.
Specialist retailers
Linn systems are sold only by selected specialist retailers who share our commitment to music and home theatre.
They will help you choose the best system by demonstrating a range of possibilities and explaining how to judge the differences, so that you can decide for yourself.
We start with the music
To us, music in your life is a necessity and quality reproduction essential. The unique, pure sound of Linn is the most accurate sound possible, delivering the most involving music and the most absorbing cinema.
We believe our approach is the best, but the way to judge us is to listen to our products. Ivor Tiefenbrun MBE Linn Products was established in 1972 by Ivor Tiefenbrun. Born in Glasgow, he was passionate about two things - engineering and listening to music.
When he couldn't buy a hi-fi good enough to satisfy his needs he decided to make one himself.
In 1972 Linn introduced the Sondek LP12 turntable. The longest-lived hi-fi product still in production anywhere in the world, and still the benchmark by which all turntables are judged. The remarkable ability of the Sondek LP12 turntable to extract more music information from records led to the understanding that retrieving and protecting the source signal carefully was what mattered most. > Find Out More
The Linn Sondek LP12 turntable revolutionised the hi-fi industry proving categorically that the source of the music is the most important component in the hi-fi chain.
Linn then set out to make the other components in the hi-fi chain as revolutionary as the first, setting new standards for performance over the years with each new product.
Today, Linn is a substantial independent precision engineering company based in Glasgow, Scotland, uniquely focused on the design, manufacture and sale of complete music and home theatre systems for customers the world over who seek only the best.
source: www.linn.co.uk
Audio Note Performance Level System
Introduction
Audio Note's product range is built around a series of ideological and technological performance platforms from which we have developed a wide and comprehensive product range catering for as many price points and as wide a performance spectrum as possible. With the end goal intended to allow our customers and dealers to select and build systems of superior sound quality and longer lasting value.
The level platforms are created to demonstrate that increases in price are consummate with suitable improvements in sound quality. What the improvements also show is that there exists a clear and demonstrable technological league table. Whilst it may not at the present time be possible within existing measurement technology to conclusively prove that these have obvious and repeatable sonic advantages over any of the currently favoured and comparable technologies, most of which were chosen for cost or convenience advantage rather than sound quality.
Such are the commercial pressures favouring cost that many technical tests and measurements are now specifically designed to provide "proof" that reductions in cost does not affect "quality", an interesting two-dimensional concept. This type of front loaded marketing started interfering with sound audio engineering principles as early as 1965, but also a sad fact of life in a world where cost rules supremely in favour of quality.
All Audio NoteT products are graded according into a system of seven levels, each of which primarily places a product according to its sonic performance, this is meant to serve as a guideline for our customers (and competitors?!) in three respects:
1.) To help in choosing the right Audio NoteT components to build and/or upgrade an Audio Note system.
2.) To act as a technological league table and guide to the best sounding technical and acoustic principles.
3.) To act as a guide to better sounding components and materials.
Rather than try design out the deficiencies in the software, we try to retain as much of the information as possible, good or bad, it is not for the equipment manufacturer to change the sound of the software, if the software sounds bad, write an insulting letter to the recording and balancing engineers, not to us!!
More than anything each Audio NoteT Product Level is primarily an indicator of the quality of sound our customers can expect from the Audio NoteT equipment they are looking at. The aim is to aid you in your search for the highest level of sound quality for your money, the first rule of which is not to buy something that you later regret, sell and lose money on, the most depressing and discouraging aspect of investing in your music's reproduction.
Formulating the Levels
The assessment of quality is based on listening criteria applied to each component according to the "comparison by contrast" method, a philosophical, but also very practical methodology wholly developed and refined by myself, as described in the "Are Your on the Road to Audio Hell?" essay. Developed over the 20 years or so, since I first noticed that the better my equipment got (I was an audio retailer then) the more "different" each of my records sounded. Over the years my record collection has grown rapidly together with the understanding of how this evaluation system can be applied to grading the sound quality of different audio equipment. As my understanding of how the many and varied techniques, technologies, parts and materials affect sound quality has improved, it has allowed me to create a "league table" of sophistication and refinement which relates to the way a well executed version of a given technology sounds.
Take amplifiers for example, here the table is easy:
Level Minus Two: Class B push-pull transistor amplifiers, no Audio Note amplifiers in this Level
Level Minus One: Class A push-pull transistor amplifiers, currently no Audio Note amplifiers in the Level
Level Zero: Class AB push-pull pentode or tetrode amplifiers
Level One: Class A push-pull pentode or tetrode amplifiers
Level Two: Class A single-ended pentode or tetrode amplifiers & Class A push-pull directly heated no-feedback triode amplifiers
Level Three: Class A single-ended directly heated no feedback triode amplifiers
Level Four: Class A single-ended directly heated no feedback triode amplifiers, with high quality parts and materials such as hard wired circuits using silver wire, copper or silver foil signal capacitors, choke coupled power supplies with valve rectifiers for the HT, with a mixture (relative to overall cost) of Cerafine or Black Gate electrolytic capacitors, non-magnetic resistors made from tantalum film and output transformers with C-cores (instead of IE cores traditionally used due to cost) with very high nickel content.
Level Five: Class A single-ended directly heated no feedback triode amplifiers, with only the very best parts and materials available, fully silver wired high content nickel iron C-core output transformers, Black Gate capacitors throughout where available, silver foil signal capacitors, and both circuit and power supply hard wired with silver wire.
Level Six: As Level Five, single-ended directly heated no feedback triode amplifiers, but all-out versions with no expense spared on parts, silver wire even in the mains lead, mains transformer, chokes, likewise highest grade C-cores in mains transformers, valve rectification and regulation, no signal coupling capacitors but silver wired C-core inter-stage transformers between each gain stage, super thin lamination Super Radiometal 48 C-cored driver and output transformers.
Level Six amplification is used to drive the Audio NoteT silver wired record cutting system helping produce the finest analogue software ever produced and thus helping to move LP quality firmly back in the driving seat of sonic quality for years to come.
Explaining the Amplifier Levels
The above Level ratings are statements of fact not fiction or conjecture, all transistor amplifiers sound poor for the simple reason that transistors are inferior amplifying devices. The word "semiconductor" really means what it says and it says it all, "half"-conductor, sonically this could be translated to mean half the signal! Which is really what it sounds like. Pure and simple, transistors are highly un-linear and need a lot of correction (feedback of some sort) to have a bandwidth wide enough to be able to reproduce any music signals, they are not natural voltage amplifiers. Likewise both the pentode or tetrode requires corrective feedback to lower the load sensitivity and improve bandwidth, they are less un-linear than transistors being high impedance devices that require matching from an output transformer. Thus they sound better when used well, especially when used single-ended or in pseudo triode mode by connecting the grids together. Pentodes and tetrodes are more efficient (give higher static power) and much cheaper than triodes, this price advantage is paid for in poorer linearity and therefore overall open loop power bandwidth and load stability, nature always gives with one hand and takes with the other!
Directly heated triodes on the other hand are highly linear amplifying devices, the directly heated triode is the original voltage amplifier, the first, only and still the best, it responds well to better circuits, components and materials, but they are less efficient and more expensive than pentodes and tetrodes. Thus they require efficient speakers, with power output being at a premium price.
Despite the use of directly heated triodes in the top three Audio NoteT Levels of performance, the improvements in purely sonic performance as well as the cost increases between Levels Three, Four and Five are considerable and need to be heard to be fully understood and appreciated. Different, but equally appropriate criteria to the above shown for amplification, can be established for each Level of the other parts of the system, speakers, CD-players, d/a converters, turntables, tone arms, cartridges, MC transformers and cables.
It is, however, vitally important to remember that the main benefit of grading our products this way is that whatever your budget, it will be possible for you to maximise the quality of sound you get for your money. Exactly because each Level offers a guaranteed and maximised price - quality relationship, with a clearly defined upgrade path it ensures that you have an easy and comprehensive guide to building your Audio NoteT system with built-in upgrade ability, predictability, reliability and longevity. This is why we think that it is important to always do our homework properly, so each model stays in the program for several years, supporting resale value and ultimate enjoyment.
No other audio manufacturer has a technical know how or musical aesthetic that allows them to offer this, in our opinion vital grading system, we respect your music, ears, money and custom enough to see this as an intelligent way of communicating our product's integrity and musical sincerity to you.
Choosing an Audio NoteT System
It is not necessarily mandatory to compose your system from one level only. Whilst this always guarantees a very high value to price - performance ratio, you may choose to mix components from different levels. Perhaps in order to provide a better - cheaper upgrade path or because you prefer the balance a mixed Level system provides.
If so then the rule of thumb is that any given system should be based around the Level of the amplifier and should generally not contain products which are more than one Level above and two Levels below the amplifier used. For example, a system may comprise of an OTO Phono SE (Level 2, meaning single-ended pentode, pure Class A), such a system could comprise of:
Level Three turntable AN-TT Three
Level Two tone arm ARM Two
Level Three cartridge IoIv
Level One MC-transformer AN-S1L
Level Three interconnects AN-V10
Level Entry CD-player CDT Zero
Level One DAC DAC One.1x
Level Two amplifier OTO Phono SE
Level Two speaker cable AN-Spa silver speaker cable
Level Two speakers AN-J/SP
As an exception, Audio NoteT cables are very flexible (both physically and in terms of system tolerance) and will improve even the most modest Audio NoteT system, regardless of the level designation of the cable.
The above system would represent a very good overall balance, as well as provide a highly suitable springboard from which to upgrade to, for example a Level Three MEISHU Phono or a pair of Level Three AN-E/SPx speakers. Both of which would contribute a substantial improvement in, not only contrast, but also low level dynamics, clarity, realism and overall refinement to the above system.
It is All About Refinement
Refinement is the central theme to every product at every level in the Audio Note product range, we do not believe in applying bigger, louder or more complex solutions to our products, but seek to establish greater value through better sound.
Through countless experiments, we have found that more power. bigger and louder, does not make products sound better or more satisfying. Instead, we look for solutions in technology, technique, parts, materials and amplifying devices that can be shown to provide better low level behaviour, as we believe that this is the most important aspects. It is after all a fact that all signals start from silence and it is at the "entry" point immediately after silence that the sound of a piece of equipment is born, so to speak.
It may therefore seem strange, however, that no audio measurements have been developed that take this into consideration, but it is obviously not high on the list of priorities of other manufacturer's to understand these issues.
In stark contrast, Audio NoteT is the only manufacturer unconventional enough to have extensively studied the behaviour of audio equipment at very low levels, and this research has confirmed most of the theories we have formulated over the years. All of which were based on the musical experience rather than blindly looking at the test equipment for the answers, we, at least understand that the test equipment is easily fooled by technical trickery such as feedback or over sampling.
We always recommend that you audition any hi-fi system at low volume at least as much as at high volume to see how well it behaves at both ends of the loudness spectrum. Systems that do not retain good bandwidth and dynamic contrast at low volume will always suffer from poor resolution regardless of volume, how often have you found yourself turning the volume up to be able to get a better sense of dynamics?
Poor resolution cannot be compensated for by higher volume, because regardless of volume setting the low level information is not resolved and is always going to be lost from the signal, this is a serious short coming, not just with classical music but with almost all music regardless of genre.
The Most Complete Product Range
Audio NoteT is also the only specialist audio company to conceptualize, design and manufacture a complete range of audio products, from turntable, tone arms and cartridges over cables, MC-transformers, CD-players, d-to-a converters (using world wide patented circuitry no less) to amplifiers, speaker cables and loudspeakers. Not all the products are expensive, we cover not just the hyper expensive, but have a complete end-to-end top-to-bottom product range covering a very broad range of cost and performance.
To make this possible Audio Note sources, specifies and designs a wide range of proprietary parts. From precision carbon film & tantalum resistors, copper and silver foils capacitors to high content nickel transformer cores and most importantly, 99.99% pure cold drawn silver wires for use in cables, coils (all our MC-transformers use 0,05mm pure silver wire!) and inter stage, interface and output transformers.
Making a wide range of complete systems also gives us nowhere to hide. We are completely responsible for the end result; the overall sound of any complete Audio NoteT system. Which provided it is set up according to its design requirements we have no problems with. Because it will comfortably and comprehensively outperform any system from any other source or combination of sources either at the same price, or even double the price and whether mixed and matched from different manufacturers products or offered as a one-manufacturer system.
When you think about it logically it is especially difficult to see how the widely accepted practice of mixing and matching components from different manufacturers can ever provide anything but lowest common denominator averageness (not daring to use the word mediocrity).
Logically it seems inconceivable that putting together a system from components designed and developed by different companies with widely varying technologies, disparaging levels of understanding and more importantly views on how a component should sound (sonic aesthetic) can possibly yield even an above average result. Regardless of this, the most established hifi industry practice has endorsed this and the reviewing process is designed to mitigate the short comings this process produces, rather than criticise its results in an attempt to improve the overall results.
A good set of examples of the Audio NoteT upgrade philosophy, is the way that the Level Three, Level Four and Level Five pre-amplifiers are designed, configured and specified. As can be seen below we first develop the very best possible circuit and power supply configurations and then refine the parts and materials contents, balanced towards the higher quality sonic performance as the price rises in the higher Levels, to maintain quality - price relationship.
Peter Qvortrup
source: www.audionote.co.uk
