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Company Success Stories - Linn Products Limited
Linn Kivor System is a Dream Come True for Serious Audiophiles
Profile
Linn Products Limited
http://www.linn.co.uk
March 13, 2002
"State-of-the-art Server powered by an AMD Duron™ processor"
More than a quarter of a century ago, Scottish engineer Ivor Tiefenbrun became convinced he could improve the sound of his own hi-fi system by applying sound engineering principals. The company he founded as a result of his initiative, Linn Products Limited, has created an international following of customers who want the very best in sound quality and believe Linn offers the innovative designs and precision engineering to deliver it.
Now based in Glasgow, Linn has grown to a company of more than 325 with a reputation for sound technology leadership and a product line that includes CD players, tuners, amplifiers and speakers. In 2001, Linn introduced a showstopper called the Linn Kivor, which the company describes as "the ultimate source product for multi-zone and sophisticated single-user audio."
The Kivor is a web-enabled hard disk-based recording and playback audio distribution system that can store up to 1400 hours of uncompressed music. The Kivor systems, powered by AMD Duron™ processors, can support up to 16 users independently, each using a keypad that provides access to every track, album or playlist in the system. If 57 days of uncompressed CD-quality music are insufficient for the customer, the Kivor can also play compressed MP3 music files, but Linn engineers prefer the better sound quality of the former. "There’s really no comparison for us. The sound quality of uncompressed music is far better," said Anton Ahmad, an applications engineer at Linn.
The preference of Linn engineers for uncompressed music led them to seek a CPU whose key attribute was stability. "To play uncompressed CDs is not a very power-intensive application," said Ahmad. "What matters most to us is uncompromised stability. That's what we have with the AMD Duron processor."
The entire system, which can cost as much as $20,000, seems ideal for the mansions of the world. The simplicity of design allows owners to feed new CDs into a slot, and presto, the music is not only recorded on the hard drive, but catalogued as well. As a December 2001 review in Hi-Fi World put it, "Within 10 minutes, your disc and all its text info is sitting on the Kivor's hard drive ready for action."
The same review describes the Kivor as "the company's most ambitious, innovative and far-reaching product to date." The reviewer calls the Kivor "a remarkable product" and a blueprint for things to come." His final sentence is most revealing: "...I suspect someday all music systems will be made this way."
A review in Stereophile (December, 2001) is equally enthusiastic, claiming that, "...for the high-end audiophile market, the Kivor is a portent for the future."
The marriage of music and PCs is being rapidly extended into new designs and products, driven by pioneering companies like Linn. Excellence in new designs is never achieved by accident. "The Kivor System went through very rigorous testing, as you can imagine," Ahmad explained. "We selected the processor we needed based on performance. As I said, the Kivor machine really must be stable. The performance of the AMD Duron processor really is superb and clearly up to the job."
Let the music play on.
And on.
And on.
© 2002 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved.
AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Duron, and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other product names used are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective companies.
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