sq225917
Exposer of Foo
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- Jan 11, 2007
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May as well post it here as well for those who don't frequent PFM or the WW.
I wasn't particularly looking for a new phonostage, I quite fancied trying the new DAC from the guy who makes the Hiface if truth be told. But here's the thing, once I started looking at DACs, spurred on by the never ending development of John Westlake's latest projects, now to become Audiolab products, i thought it would make sense to put a bit of cash aside. Before I had realised it, a bit, had become quite a bit. Of course the money pile exists, but neither of the dac/cd's I'm looking at are ready yet- there's an Async USB joke in there somewhere.
I acquired a Benz LP a couple of month back to go with a recently-ish purchased SME 10 and V. These were still plugged into a DIY phonostage based on the guts on the Naim 323 cards. The remote power supply for these comprises a 200VA transformer feeding a HackerCap rectifier board, feeding Q speed diodes and Mundorf caps, this gives up two rails to the phonostage which has locally mounted SuperTeddyregs inside the box. The cards are modded as follows. All the small signal polcarbonate caps have been replaced with polystyrenes, some gert big ones at that. The power rail decoupling electrolytic has been replaced with 10uf WIma MKP and the ERO feedback cap replaced with Silmics and .1 teflon bypasses. The zener circuit has been removed due to the presence of local regulation and the loading resistors changed for Charcrofts. Frankly it sounds bloody good, and so it should. Which leads us to.
So I'm sat wasting some time on Ebay thinking I'll just look at the Phonostages. hoping as ever to find that elusive bargain that no one else noticed, a diamond in the rough, that misspelt gem in the worng category and woefully underpriced with a BIN of £30. I didn't find it. But I did see a Linn Uphorik for £1350. Now that sound s like fair money to me, decent 2nd hand price, worth a punt and move it on without a loss if it doesn't fit. What's more he's local and he's happy with cash on collection. Ahh bugger it I'm in. Deal done, paid for, collected and installed.
and it looks like this- from the outside
I'm neither here nor there over the looks, it's a plain grey box with a moderately shapely front panel. it's not going to offend anyone and I doubt it's going to appear in MOMA either, ( not until being blinded by the worlds brighest blue LED becomes an artform- one which Linn have sewn up already I should mention).
Around the back you'd see seperate inputs for MM and MC as well as single ended and balanced outputs. These hint at the circuit being dual mono and having each channel split into MM or MC gain stages and shared RIAA for each channel. (Not unlike the little Cambridge Audio 640p in fact). Sure enough once you open it up and peel back the heavy shielding plates that cover each channel that's exactly what you will see. The shielding plates are worth a look on there own, Linn have gone to quite some effort to keep the radio nasties out- a sensible move some would say when you are employing a switch mode power supply in the same case.
The shielding plates are worth a look on there own, Linn have gone to quite some effort to keep the radio nasties out- a sensible move some would say when you are employing a switch mode power supply in the same case. I do find it curious however that while they dutifully twist the wires to the LED they don't bother doing the same for those comeing from the Brilliant supply itself.
Flexibility?
One area where the Uphorik does stand out against previous Linn stages is in its flexibility, you have multiple gain, resistive and capacitive loadings available for MM, LO MC and HO MC. I think if it had been me doing the choices of values for this I might have considered a bit more a spread. MC carts that need loading between 25-100 ohms are well catered for, theres a couple of option above 100 and under 1k, but theres nothing over 1k. For my Benz LP that's a bit of a bugger, because it absolutely sounds best running into 47k. Fortunately for me, Linn were forward thinking enough to leave a coupe of solder pads spare inside to allow you to override the loading switch and solder your own in directly. (Or if you are a typical numpty, pay your dealer a disproportionate amount for 30 seconds of soldering).
Circuit central.
Nicely done, you must agree. All beautifully laid out surface mount componentry, apart from those caps. Good looking ground planes, a multi layer board, very nicely executed. But holy shit, did they win first price at the eat all you like Op-amp contest at TI last year. There's 14, yes 14, count em, op-amps for each channel. I've seen mixing desks with less. Admittedly, they are all single channel devices so it's not such a silicon fest as it first seems.
A closer look at the circuit for 1 channel shows it laid out into 4 sections, Active RIAA, Power supply, MM and MC gain stages. It is all rather neatly done very workmanlike. But of course this is all just starter to the main course- what does it actually sound like. The Superline beater, the best phonostage Linn have ever made etc etc do the plaudits really stack up to the sound when you take it outside of a Linn dealer and the salivating expectation of a Linnie in an all Linn environment?
Well, does it?
I wasn't particularly looking for a new phonostage, I quite fancied trying the new DAC from the guy who makes the Hiface if truth be told. But here's the thing, once I started looking at DACs, spurred on by the never ending development of John Westlake's latest projects, now to become Audiolab products, i thought it would make sense to put a bit of cash aside. Before I had realised it, a bit, had become quite a bit. Of course the money pile exists, but neither of the dac/cd's I'm looking at are ready yet- there's an Async USB joke in there somewhere.
I acquired a Benz LP a couple of month back to go with a recently-ish purchased SME 10 and V. These were still plugged into a DIY phonostage based on the guts on the Naim 323 cards. The remote power supply for these comprises a 200VA transformer feeding a HackerCap rectifier board, feeding Q speed diodes and Mundorf caps, this gives up two rails to the phonostage which has locally mounted SuperTeddyregs inside the box. The cards are modded as follows. All the small signal polcarbonate caps have been replaced with polystyrenes, some gert big ones at that. The power rail decoupling electrolytic has been replaced with 10uf WIma MKP and the ERO feedback cap replaced with Silmics and .1 teflon bypasses. The zener circuit has been removed due to the presence of local regulation and the loading resistors changed for Charcrofts. Frankly it sounds bloody good, and so it should. Which leads us to.
So I'm sat wasting some time on Ebay thinking I'll just look at the Phonostages. hoping as ever to find that elusive bargain that no one else noticed, a diamond in the rough, that misspelt gem in the worng category and woefully underpriced with a BIN of £30. I didn't find it. But I did see a Linn Uphorik for £1350. Now that sound s like fair money to me, decent 2nd hand price, worth a punt and move it on without a loss if it doesn't fit. What's more he's local and he's happy with cash on collection. Ahh bugger it I'm in. Deal done, paid for, collected and installed.
and it looks like this- from the outside
I'm neither here nor there over the looks, it's a plain grey box with a moderately shapely front panel. it's not going to offend anyone and I doubt it's going to appear in MOMA either, ( not until being blinded by the worlds brighest blue LED becomes an artform- one which Linn have sewn up already I should mention).
Around the back you'd see seperate inputs for MM and MC as well as single ended and balanced outputs. These hint at the circuit being dual mono and having each channel split into MM or MC gain stages and shared RIAA for each channel. (Not unlike the little Cambridge Audio 640p in fact). Sure enough once you open it up and peel back the heavy shielding plates that cover each channel that's exactly what you will see. The shielding plates are worth a look on there own, Linn have gone to quite some effort to keep the radio nasties out- a sensible move some would say when you are employing a switch mode power supply in the same case.
The shielding plates are worth a look on there own, Linn have gone to quite some effort to keep the radio nasties out- a sensible move some would say when you are employing a switch mode power supply in the same case. I do find it curious however that while they dutifully twist the wires to the LED they don't bother doing the same for those comeing from the Brilliant supply itself.
Flexibility?
One area where the Uphorik does stand out against previous Linn stages is in its flexibility, you have multiple gain, resistive and capacitive loadings available for MM, LO MC and HO MC. I think if it had been me doing the choices of values for this I might have considered a bit more a spread. MC carts that need loading between 25-100 ohms are well catered for, theres a couple of option above 100 and under 1k, but theres nothing over 1k. For my Benz LP that's a bit of a bugger, because it absolutely sounds best running into 47k. Fortunately for me, Linn were forward thinking enough to leave a coupe of solder pads spare inside to allow you to override the loading switch and solder your own in directly. (Or if you are a typical numpty, pay your dealer a disproportionate amount for 30 seconds of soldering).
Circuit central.
Nicely done, you must agree. All beautifully laid out surface mount componentry, apart from those caps. Good looking ground planes, a multi layer board, very nicely executed. But holy shit, did they win first price at the eat all you like Op-amp contest at TI last year. There's 14, yes 14, count em, op-amps for each channel. I've seen mixing desks with less. Admittedly, they are all single channel devices so it's not such a silicon fest as it first seems.
A closer look at the circuit for 1 channel shows it laid out into 4 sections, Active RIAA, Power supply, MM and MC gain stages. It is all rather neatly done very workmanlike. But of course this is all just starter to the main course- what does it actually sound like. The Superline beater, the best phonostage Linn have ever made etc etc do the plaudits really stack up to the sound when you take it outside of a Linn dealer and the salivating expectation of a Linnie in an all Linn environment?
Well, does it?
.
