asking for upgrade advice

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cortina
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Re: asking for upgrade advice

Post by cortina »

In that case you should never have bought the SM and TM in the first place but settled with a Linn Intek or similar to be able to afford potential future KDS upgrades that are becoming increasingly silly expensive. With limited funds.
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Re: asking for upgrade advice

Post by lejonklou »

cortina wrote:In that case you should never have bought the SM and TM in the first place but settled with a Linn Intek or similar to be able to afford potential future KDS upgrades that are becoming increasingly silly expensive. With limited funds.
Ha ha!

Of course all of that will depend on how much you can spend on your HiFi. A Linn Intek is almost for free. I have one if someone is interested.

When it comes to practical implementations, I think Matthias wins this debate.
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Re: asking for upgrade advice

Post by cortina »

Of course.. But then spending money on the most musical upgrade upstreams are very often argued but rarely with a fully open minded attitute. Sometimes it is a rule, other times practial considerations or limited funds are ok arguments.
I am not disagreeing in this particular thread, just reacting on what I find an increasingly narrowminded forum atmosphere. But perhaps that is just me and then that’s not a problem. :)
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Re: asking for upgrade advice

Post by Spannko »

lejonklou wrote:
Spannko wrote:I say “blinkered” because the conversation is more about what has been (and why things work, or don’t) rather than what could be.
Ok, you prefer to look forward. I like that, but it's more speculative, don't you think? In general we have to try things to get an idea of how far a route can take us.
Spannko wrote:Would you say that it’s impossible to:

A) design a musical active crossover
B) design a musical power amplifier optimised to drive a hf unit
C) design a musical power amplifier optimised to drive a lf unit

that would outperform the best passive system available?
A: Of course not. To design one with zero negative impact on the music is impossible, but to design a musical one is very possible.
B and C: So far I have not found it possible to make an amplifier better for a certain frequency range that doesn't also make it better in other frequency ranges. Same thing with cables and connectors and crimped/soldered joints - if A has a more musical bass than B, it also has a more musical midrange and treble. So my answer at the moment is that it's impossible. I'd be thrilled to be proven wrong on this, as it's a very important question.

To the final summary, that A, B and C would outperform the best passive system available, my answer is: I'm sure it's possible! I don't claim that passive is inherently better than aktiv. Every design can be improved upon and you never know how far you can travel along each path.

What to do in reality, when spending a limited amount of money to build a system, perhaps also with additional limitations (physical space, shelve space, aesthetics, etc), is of course a whole other discussion.
Yes, I totally agree that a “what could be” approach is very speculative! And, just the thought of it puts a smile on my face!

I was wondering if the more tightly defined lcr parameters of known drive units might enable a power amp to be more finely tuned for musicality, rather than thinking about the “benefits” of a limited frequency range.
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Re: asking for upgrade advice

Post by ThomasOK »

If Fredrik were to come out with an active crossover for the 3677s I would likely be one of the first to purchase it and an additional pair of TMs. Yes, I could save the money to apply to the next LP12 upgrade or preamp upgrade or even poweramp upgrade. However, my expectation is that the next preamp and poweramp upgrades will come from Fredrik and they are likely to be reasonable (and certainly will be reasonable compared to most everything else out there). Also, my expectation, shown to be historically accurate, is that new upgrades to the Klimax LP12 don't come out all that often and also aren't outrageous in price. Some would argue that point on some LP12 Klimax pieces but, lets face it, if you can afford another pair of TM2.2s and a similarly priced crossover, as conjectured on above, then $3000 to $5000 for the next big actual LP12 upgrade is not likely to kill your budget.

The other thing to realize is that you could take this to the ridiculous as mentioned above. Get a Nait and a pair of Kans and hook your Klimax LP12 into it and wait for the next upgrade. It would certainly sound good, but you wouldn't be hearing anywhere near as much music as what you would get with a full Mono setup and the 3677s, or other speaker of your choice. In addition, you must also remember that your active LP12 (or KDS) Lejonklou/3677 system will still be just as enjoyable and enrapture you with the music just as much after Linn comes out with the Knuckle upgrade for the LP12 as it did before. Sure the guy with the Knuckle LP12 and passives 3677s will now have a more musical system but for all the years leading up to the Knuckle upgrade yours will have been giving you more enjoyment. And if you decide to sink another $5000 into the Knuckle you will once again be on top of the heap.

That said, the problem for me comes back to the crossover. From what I see most current active systems are going towards crossover/amplifier/speaker combinations for the sake of simplicity and cost savings (although I have a hard time seeing the cost savings on current Exakt speakers). In the past I obviously used this kind of system but when I finally managed to get a pair of ATC passive crossovers and tried it with Tundra Monos, I was rather disappointed with the amount of music I had been missing with the active system. This type of system obviously places severe limits on the ability to upgrade and to use the best electronics which really precludes it for me (at least until Fredrik comes out with his three way speaker using an 18" woofer, 15" midbass and horn tweeter with room in the back of the monstrous cabinet for the four Tundra Monos to fit inside - sorry for spilling the beans). :-)

The separate electronic crossover is now a rare item and for good reasons. One option is to make it work with a wide range of speakers. But then it has to be extremely adjustable to allow it to be used optimally with all those speakers and this requires a degree of complexity that automatically fights against musicality. The other option is to make it speaker specific but this means that there is a very limited audience for the product which augurs against spending the time, energy and money to develop one. This might have been more plausible back when there were fewer models of speaker on the market and something like the Linn Isobarik was dominant enough to have a few companies design active crossovers for it. But with the rather over extended amount of Hi-Fi out there serving a smaller market than existed 30 to 40 years ago, and the commercialization of most of the industry, there are few speakers that really stand above the crowd, fewer still that could be adapted to active operation without significant surgery. Hence why I am not holding my breath for a Lejonklou electronic crossover as I don't expect we'll see one - unless it is something Fredrik wants for himself enough to put some of that tremendous amount of spare time he has into it. ;-)

Notice I have left out Exakt and like devices from the above discussion. Obviously, using DSP based systems you can do anything you want with a crossover in terms of levels, crossover curves, phase corrections, driver and room EQ, etc. However, I have still yet to hear a DSP crossover active system I found as musically convincing as a similar, or even less expensive, analog active or passive system. Seeing as I have yet to find a DVC (digital volume control), even the best ones, that I feel sounds near as good as a really good analog volume control, you can imagine how likely I feel it is that you can get musical reproduction out of a device with a whole bunch of DVCs in it. And that's even before we get to the whole other discussion of whether you really can correct for the types of things it is claimed you can correct for.

So while I have enjoyed active systems in the past, I can't say I'm hopeful about doing the same in the future. And really, as good as the music sounds in my house now I can't say I'm too worried about it. On the other hand, just to back up matthias a bit it is only fair to mention that I hooked up a Klimax LP12 and KDS/3 to a Boazu and Majik 109s in the store yesterday and even the music off the KDS/3 was at times raising the hair on my arms!
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Re: asking for upgrade advice

Post by lejonklou »

Thomas, your fantastic post on this subject makes me look stupid. I am not happy about that.

Neither am I happy about the fact that you revealed my top secret 18" - 15" - hf horn speaker project.

I am now very annngry!
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Re: asking for upgrade advice

Post by sunbeamgls »

lejonklou wrote:Thomas, your fantastic post on this subject makes me look stupid. I am not happy about that.

Neither am I happy about the fact that you revealed my top secret 18" - 15" - hf horn speaker project.

I am now very annngry!
Now just put down that soldering iron Fredrik....step back from the bench...sit down slowly...carefully...and breathe...
KSH/0; KEBox/2; 3x Tundra Stereo 2.5; PMC fact.12. Blogger. Exakt Design. SO measuring.
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Re: asking for upgrade advice

Post by Matteo »

It could be interesting to test these active speakers with Sagatun:

http://www.acoustic-energy.co.uk/reference/ae1-active/

Very positive opinions on Linn Forum by a couple of members with ADSM.

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Re: asking for upgrade advice

Post by ThomasOK »

lejonklou wrote:Thomas, your fantastic post on this subject makes me look stupid. I am not happy about that.

Neither am I happy about the fact that you revealed my top secret 18" - 15" - hf horn speaker project.

I am now very annngry!
You stole my line! I am going to have to disintegrate you! (Spoken in a very nasal manner.)
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Re: asking for upgrade advice

Post by MikeF »

lejonklou wrote:
The thing is that I don't fully trust theoretical models. I believe it when I hear it. And: How passive and aktiv systems are executed is not clearly defined. There might be ways to do it that we haven't thought of yet.
Sure I do love this quote. As far as I can tell, there is no way to measure scientifically the way reproduced music is perceived by our ears and brain combined. So there can be no model or theory written in stone. In science, experimnet wins over theory everytime and this is in "simple" things like natural sciences where the complexicity of brains and perception has not entered yet. Sure you have to make your experiment careful and be aware of mistakes. From many experiments you may derive empirical rules, which most (or all of the tried) times are true, but are not striclty proven.

Now it seems the great achievement of Tune dem is to provide an )almost) objective way to measure the degree with which music will be enjoyed through a system. NB I never tried it myself, too busy too lazy, but I do notice some differences in my system.

Sorry for so big words to start entering again in the topic about my system, which turned into an interesting discussion.

By now, I have some more interesting data to add. After I had finally recovered the space in our living room to place my Ninkas again (on Majik DS and Boazu which clearly outperformed the active non-D C6100), I added a second Afekt subwoofer and was quite happy, so happy that the bug bite again.

This time I went for a KRDS 1 (as the KRDS 2 on the forum was already sold), and well it was not convincing. Having made the swap, I was not sure if it was better than the Majik DS and when by chance playing the computer over the MDS, I was shocked, the MDS was much better. So what was wrong? Since the KRDS has only one pair of RCA jack (rather han two like the MDS, using the second to go through a Kikkin into the subs), I had routed the signal instead directly into the subwoofers through the Kikkin, taking it out from the subwoofer high pass (lowest setting) to enter into Boazu. Whether it was worth a try or not, I do not know, but the result was very bad. One detail early in the chain messed up things so badly, that even the better source was completly at loss. Even with source first, things can be always messed up later as well.

So I got some decent XLR-RCA adapter for the Kikkin-Subs branch and now it is singing again. Yes, it seems better than the MDS, but the difference does not feel so striking as when I upgraded from the Classik Movie CDP to the MDS. Sound did not improved so much, but rather involvement/enjoyability.

And with this I come back to the original title. Whta could be next, I figure the only not very expensive upgrade could be on the speakers, picking up a pair of second hand 109 or 140, which on top have the advantage that tweeters are protected against the fingers of my exploring son (yes, anything it takes to justify a new upgrade).

What is the advice on this?

Will 109/140 be clearly better than Ninkas or not? The Ninkas being closed, I am a bit afraid of the bass ports adding volume on price of bass definition. Or should I save directly my money and go for the Akubarik passive, which now seems to be the most probably end of the journey? Can the Boazu drive Akubariks, or better Monos? Are there other recommended alternative speakers, for the moment ruling out the famous JBL 3677 for space reasons? I definitivetly need speakers not too critical in terms of placement, as the room is small and has some furniture. I would keep the Subs unless the speakers provide really deep bass. I am willing to make some compromises in terms of the timing of the next upgrades. I see no problem in getting "too good" speakers for now while waiting for the first KRDS 3 to hit the market. And for the moment I am reluctant to improve over the Boazu as it is already very good and the cost of a siginifcant upgrade may be high (although I would consider Kikkin - TM as another intermediate step, there was one pair for sale on Audiowoof, but in the end it went into a trade in, rather than to me)

Many thanks

Michael
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Re: asking for upgrade advice

Post by Charlie1 »

MikeF wrote:What is the advice on this?

Will 109/140 be clearly better than Ninkas or not? The Ninkas being closed, I am a bit afraid of the bass ports adding volume on price of bass definition. Or should I save directly my money and go for the Akubarik passive, which now seems to be the most probably end of the journey? Can the Boazu drive Akubariks, or better Monos? Are there other recommended alternative speakers, for the moment ruling out the famous JBL 3677 for space reasons? I definitivetly need speakers not too critical in terms of placement, as the room is small and has some furniture. I would keep the Subs unless the speakers provide really deep bass. I am willing to make some compromises in terms of the timing of the next upgrades. I see no problem in getting "too good" speakers for now while waiting for the first KRDS 3 to hit the market. And for the moment I am reluctant to improve over the Boazu as it is already very good and the cost of a siginifcant upgrade may be high (although I would consider Kikkin - TM as another intermediate step, there was one pair for sale on Audiowoof, but in the end it went into a trade in, rather than to me)

Many thanks

Michael
Hi Mike,

Some random thoughts as I’ve been awake since 1am :( I got a great deal on 140s so upgraded from Ninkas. 140s are not massively better. The bass can be worse depending upon the rest of your system. The top end has that nice open refined treble that is a definite step forward from Ninka generation. midrange was noticeably better too, especially acoustic guitar. You really need to buy the upgraded bases too. There is something timing/rhythm related which I felt Ninkas did better - maybe this is virtue of the closed cabinet design. One thing I found with 140s is that the bass quality varies a lot depending upon the source. People occasionally criticise 140 bass performance, but the better stands and Tundra Stereo made a big difference. Now it is tight and tuneful, whereas it was a bit diffuse and monotone in the past. Passive 140s have quite a lot more bass than aktiv Ninkas, unless you make the 2db cut, so you might be able to do away with the sub. I’ve stayed away from musicality comments cos I’m not confident about my thoughts. It was complicated by the fact my Ninkas were aktiv with 4200 whereas 140s were passive on the same amp. The best thing I can say about my system now (kk1, lp12se) is that, whilst not the very best, nothing ever really strikes me as wrong or lacking so I can get on and play music without thinking about needing to ‘fix’ something. My room is 4 x4.5m with solid brick wall behind, so quite easy to drive and play loud.

Good luck!
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Re: asking for upgrade advice

Post by MikeF »

Thanks Charlie for your opinion on the 140.

In principle I would prefer something clearly better than Ninka, something that can stay for 20 years while the rest of the system evolves. Which speaker are clearly better than Ninkas and easy in placement? Akubarik, Akudorik? Other brands?
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Re: asking for upgrade advice

Post by matthias »

MikeF wrote: In principle I would prefer something clearly better than Ninka, something that can stay for 20 years while the rest of the system evolves. Which speaker are clearly better than Ninkas and easy in placement? Akubarik, Akudorik? Other brands?
I recommend JBL3677s (if you can get a pair, now discontinued). They can be placed at close distance to a wall like Isobariks, Kans, etc.

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Re: asking for upgrade advice

Post by beck »

matthias wrote:
MikeF wrote: In principle I would prefer something clearly better than Ninka, something that can stay for 20 years while the rest of the system evolves. Which speaker are clearly better than Ninkas and easy in placement? Akubarik, Akudorik? Other brands?
I recommend JBL3677s (if you can get a pair, now discontinued). They can be placed at close distance to a wall like Isobariks, Kans, etc.

Matt
+1

Jajo is selling his movie setup in the sale section.. If I had the space and money I would try them out.
Playing cd’s…………
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Re: asking for upgrade advice

Post by MikeF »

sorry guys but the JBL will not do although it is very competitively priced when all the good things I read are true (no doubts)

The thing is the gap between sofa and cupboard where the left speaker is standing is too narrow, maybe 30 cm, I do not think that the JBL would fit, although it is indeed a tempting idea.

The room/situation is far from ideal, but we all have to make compromises in life, and I prefer to have my family in and smaller speakers than big speaker. The subs are now in front of the Ninkas and I have been told it would be nice to have standmounts with special stands into which the subs are integrated. Well if the stands have walls left /right and he subs is only touching the room floor it may work.
People here have also been talking about Totem Sky a lot. Hidden systems has one Element Ember ex Demo for sale. Anybody has tried blocking the rear bass ports on those (as has been considered at least acceptable for some Linn models).

Regards

Michael
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Re: asking for upgrade advice

Post by Ozzzy189 »

I'd certainly demo the totem speakers. Totem sky, either tower or stand mounted speakers would be a good option.
The embers are fantastic but you'd probably need to try them at home and they do respond well to space optimisation believe it or not - yes that's me advocating space unbelievably, as they can have a slight midrange dip with some amps.
Give Chris a ring, I recently got some totems and they're incredibly good and his help and expertise is always on hand to help you find audio nirvana.
Arro might be an option too, they work well with Lejonklou. If you can stretch to signature ones, I'd recommend a demo of those. There's a good review online if you dig around.
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Re: asking for upgrade advice

Post by Ozzzy189 »

One more thing... Totem Tribe towers...
Probably the best slim floorstanding speakers I've ever heard. By some margin. They're extremely well balanced, which I feel is their biggest quality and they also dig deep too, down to 30hz.
I'm in North Lincolnshire if you are close enough to call for a listen.
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Re: asking for upgrade advice

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ADS3/SagMono/Tundra 2.2- . Totem Tribe Tower.
Lejonklou demos available in the N of England.
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Re: asking for upgrade advice

Post by Music Lover »

MikeF wrote: People here have also been talking about Totem Sky a lot.
Yes, but have anybody compared them with something we know, 109 or other Linn speakers?

Also ATC and PMC are often mentioned by Linn owners. Worth considering I guess.
It's all about musical understanding!
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Re: asking for upgrade advice

Post by Ozzzy189 »

Music Lover wrote:
MikeF wrote: People here have also been talking about Totem Sky a lot.
Yes, but have anybody compared them with something we know, 109 or other Linn speakers?

Also ATC and PMC are often mentioned by Linn owners. Worth considering I guess.
Chris is the guy to ask. I'll ask him if he's got time to post here.
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Re: asking for upgrade advice

Post by MikeF »

Dear all,

I am back after some time. With new questions.
As you may find deeper inside this thread, I exchanged the C6100 active for Linn Ninkas for a Boazu and was extremely happy (with Majik DS, and stereo Afekt subwoofers). As it always happens with me, when it works well, I want to go on, improve, even though my family and bicycle, take a lot of time and budget.

So next step I the plunge and went for a KRDS 1 and I was quite disappointed. Yes, it was good but far from as big an improvemnet as I had imagined.And there it stopped for some time.

The other day, the people from the phone company wanted to exchange the internet to fibre and I had to dismount the whole setup and remount it. And there was a suprise. I had also gotten a pir of silver interconnects, but they connected quite softly on the RCA outputs. I use both the RCA and the XLR outputs of the KRDS, one running into Boazu and the other running into a Kikkin and the then Afekt subwoofers. So the Silver did not catch on the RCA and I used a pair of black interconnects from the RCA into Kikkin. For the Boazu on the "better" silver interconnects, I got some plug-on XLR -RCA adapters, supposedly high quality. And what I found was that these adapters were (inexplicably) not well mounted, it seems it did not push them properly on to lock. They were just hanging around there. Ok, you can laugh now if you want.

So now after I fixed them, the whole thing is much better, very enjoyable, and, logically got me thinking about next steps.

Again there are many possibilities and so I will value very much your opinions.

The Totem Tribe Tower (instead of Ninka, possibly gettingrid of the subs as well) got my attention due to the good reviews and the easy characteristics with respect to placement. The placement in my relatively small room for any speaker is far from optimal. Now they are shoved between furniture and the most common listening position is not centered, but very much sideways. This is the compromise I have to do for my family. Downside, there is no dealer in Spain and I would have to get them from somewhere, eventually without testing.

Trying to get a used KDS3 with Katalyst is another option, but the little improvement between Majik DS and KRDS 1, plus the price makes me doubt.

Third several Lejonklou options appear for the amplifiers. Right now I saw the Tundra (from Sound Hound) on Ebay, which could be upgraded to 2.5. Compared with the above, that would be a comparatively cheap action (using the Kikkin), but the question is, how much better is that (compared to Boazu) and wouldnt t it get in my way of going to monos in the end? At least the volume sychronization between the speakers and Subs which now is fiddely, would be solved. Or should I go directly for a proper preamp?

Anybody could comment on the capabilities of Tundra stereo vs mono to drive the totem tribe towers? I am pretty sure I will end with them sooner or later. They are supposed to not need too much power, but good control due to the cross over free design of the low/mid range.

Best regards
Michael
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Re: asking for upgrade advice

Post by MikeF »

PS
totem tribe tower as already recommended long time ago in this thread
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