Sounds Like Haggis

 In the 1970's, when gas was cheap, cars were ugly and stereos were even uglier, a brilliant young Scottish engineer was messin' around with his father's ( somewhat crappy) turntable. He made a set of very long leads ( what we now call interconnects) and put the turntable in a whole other room in the house.

Long wires were probably not the best choice, due to the very low voltage in a phono signal, but he nevertheless made an astonishing discovery which proved to be revolutionary at the time. The turntable sounded way better. Ivor Tiefenbrun had figured out that vibrations from the speakers, particularly low frequencies, whether they be airborne or floor-borne, dramatically affected the sound and performance of the said turntable.

He went to his father's shop, called Castle Engineering , and convinced some engineers to help him build his project ( I'm sure there was a lot of whisky -induced bribes). The year was 1973 and Tiefenbrun created the Linn LP-12. Named after the industrial park that the shop was located in and the fact that it played 12 inch LP's ( and no 45' s, because screw that, they sucked anyway). The venerable LP-12 became the benchmark by which all other turntable were judged and continues to be produced to this day. It is one of the longest continuous runs of an audio product ( and freakin' expensive).

Made in Glasgow, ya mad bastards.

These days Linn  is housed in a ultra-high tech building in a suburb of Glasgow and continues to make some of the best audio gear on the planet. There simple philosophy remains true to Ivor's vision: source first. This simple concept eludes a lot of people. Some folks simply refuse to believe it, and some audiophiles would whip their Shun-Mook Mpingo discs at you in a fit of rage for even mentioning such heresy.

I must kill you now

When asked what the most important component of an audio system is, most people, audiophiles and non-audiophiles alike will unequivocally answer " speakers". If they are hippies they will answer " what speakers..maaa-aan?" If they are hipsters , they will answer, " I don't use speakers, they are too mainstream, I use a gramophone that plays recordings etched onto artisanal gluten-free cheese,"

Unfortunately that's not quite right. Ivor had it right all those years ago; the source is your most important component. The source being where your music originates from, whether it's a turntable, CD player or computer. Let me elaborate.

Let's say your neighbor's dog poops on your lawn. In a fit of anger you repeatedly stomp on the pile of poop. Do you have less poop or more poop? Or let's say you're really nutso, like a landlord here in town who was in the news recently. You take a piece of the offending dog poop to a laboratory. At the lab they put a piece of the poop under a scanning electron microscope. What do you think they will see? Molecules of dog shit DNA is what. Very large images of shit particles.

Or more graphically, if you put a frog in a blender, the result will not be more frogs or a really fast super-frog. It will me a mess of frog guts.

So you see, when the IT guys at your office are talking about garbage in =garbage out , they are referring to pretty much the same thing.

Think of your stereo as microscope. The more expensive the stereo the more the microscope can resolve and see minute detail. Your stereo is kinda dumb, it can only amplify what you put into it whether it's Rock n' Roll, dog poop or frog guts.

From a technical standpoint , you have to imagine that an audio signal is complex and operates at very low voltages. It is fragile, because we are dealing with electrons after all. As a rule of thumb, try to allocate about 30% of your budget to your source. Whether it is vinyl, CD or computers, make sure you get this part right. A great source will always sound better, even in just decent speakers than the other way around. Simple physics.

Getting the source right is a little more complicated than it sounds, but with a bit of diligence, one can find a great sounding source, whatever one's budget may be. In future posts I will discuss in more detail the various sources such as the limitations of vinyl and the absolute necessity of using a DAC if you are into computer audio.

The format in which sources have been ans a currently available has always been complex. I believe that we are headed in new and exciting directions with computer audio and the high resolution files that are readily available, but that might change. If both Microsoft and Apple ever go out of business, the world may be using computers in a completely new, as of yet unimagined, way. Maybe laser beams will etch bits of information onto individual molecules of dog shit DNA, who knows.


Unfortunately, the format wars have always been with us. I guess the music industry was partially to blame, there was a time when they derived perverse pleasure from squeezing as much money out of consumers as possible. Not so much anymore in this age of downloading and bit torrents. Then, as now, the artists were usually the ones to get the short end of the stick. While it's true that Rock n; Roll created many rock star millionaires, the industry as a whole started to shoot itself in the foot when CD's started retailing for upwards of 25 bucks a pop ( in Canada anyway) while the artist might receive a small fraction of this. That is a whole other discussion however. Large manufacturers who wanted to gain a stranglehold on the market were probably the main culprit.

Case in point would be the Sony Corporation. Sony has been around for a long time and make everything from electronic gizmos for finding fish at the bottom of a lake ( what was wrong with the tried and true method of flashlights and shotguns?),  shrill sounding speakers, stupid looking robots that walk into walls and scare little kids and who knows, they might even make the devices to analyze all that dog poop DNA.

While everybody was happy with vinyl,  Sony and Phillips teamed up to create the S/PDIF standard for CD's . All your CD's are  made using the Sony/Phillips Digital Interface Format. Phillips themselves were responsible for that sonic abomination called a cassette, invented way back in '63 so Madmen-type execs could dictate to their secretaries without interrupting their whiskey drinking. Yeah, don't even get me started on cassettes.

Before that Sony wasn't happy with formats and wanted the whole pie for themselves. Most failed miserably. I'm sure some of you remember the legendary Beta/VHS debacle. There were other more obscure ones however. The Elcaset was another Sony brainstorm in the 70's. Elcasets looked like the bastard child of a cassette and an 8-track. You had to buy a ( very expensive) dedicated player and nothing was available in pre-recorded formats like a regular cassettes ( shitty, but I can't deny they existed). That fizzled with barely a whimper.

They attempted the same thing with DAT ( digital audio tape). Not a terrible idea, as digital was to be the future of music, but the cassettes were proprietary. Also they were about the same size as an SD card, so you could easily lose them or your dog would eat them.

Then there was the Mini Disc. Again not a terrible idea, but flawed, shitty and extremely proprietary. I seem to recall Sony attempting to sell prerecorded ones, but that never went anywhere. Dogs could also eat these, but they could also be used as throwing weapons.

DVD/A or DVD audio showed some promise and Sony immediately jumped in with a competing and absolutely incompatible format, SACD. Both had potential as a serious high resolution format, but instead started re-releasing bullshit longhair music in 6 channels ( rather than a super hi-res 2 channel). More money for aging rock stars like Ping Floy or whatever they are called and dealers of psychtropic drugs around the world. Man, you had to be on drugs to listen to Dark Side of the Moon in six freakin' channels. I guess the drugs ran out at Sony headquarters because that format is deader than Thomas Edison ( may he rest in peace and finally stop rapidly rotating in his grave).

In the meantime I wonder what Sony will have for us next. I can't completely dismiss Sony however. In the 80's I thought that Sony Walkman was the greatest freakin' thing since sliced bread. However, my old grandpa thought that they were anti-social and it really made him angry. Not necessarily a bad thing for a rebellious youth, but I know for a fact that I did some serious permanent damage to my hearing. What's that Sony?... sorry I can't hear you.