Digital Stream Players
Discover more music than ever before from your CDs and digital downloads.
We have several Digital Stream players availble instore for demonstration including the LINN Sneaky, Majik, Akurate and Klimax Digital Stream players.
Digital Stream Player FAQ
What is a Linn DS Player?
A new type of digital to analogue converter. It is a new type of product, a source component, like an upgraded CD player, which is connected to your amplifier.
Why should I be interested in purchasing a Linn DS Player?
Sound quality and convenience! It is simply a better way of playing back music from your CD collection (or music downloaded from the internet). In an A/B comparison, it is very easy to hear that to copy your music CD and play it back using a Linn DS produces a much more musical and involving experience than playing it on your CD player! And once you have copied your collection, you can store it away, saving space and clutter!
Isn’t it just a sort of iPod – compressed poor quality?
No – emphatically not! You can play back material at iPod quality and it will actually sound better, but when copying your own library there are other formats to choose from. The one we use is known as FLAC - Free Lossless Audio Codec – with the accent on the “Lossless”. This stores them as 16bit copies which are identical to the original CD and they invariably sound better! It may sound odd that the copy can be better than the original, but when the copying takes place, the device doing the copying can look at the information on the disc several times, especially if it finds imperfections, till it produces a “bit perfect” copy. It is this perfect copy that is stored for playback. Your CD player really has only one chance to extract the information from the disc and reproduce it!
The system will also go further than CD quality, supporting Studio Master Quality 24bit recordings that can be obtained by downloading from specialist websites – www.linnrecords.com for one!
OK, so is the music actually stored in the DS?
No, for preference it is stored on a separate hard drive which can accommodate literally hundreds of albums. This gives the opportunity to select a device with different capacities and functions to suit your requirements.
How would I copy a CD?
There are hard drives in the market place which incorporate a copying (ripping) mechanism, or you can use a pc or laptop. Either way the system needs to be connected to the internet to collect artist and album information for each disc.
So how is the DS connected to the drive?
Via a computer network. Living in the age of the computer, many households are already equipped, but don’t worry if you have qualms setting things up, we can help!
And how do I select playback of my music?
A number of ways: using your laptop or pc; or with a PDA such as an HP iPaq or an Apple iTouch or iPhone. You can then select a “playlist” of tracks or whole albums, which can be up to 999 tracks long – enough to keep you going for a bit! And if the DS is connected to a newer Linn amplifier, you can also control the volume!