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Interview with Alan Williams, LINN Sales Manager, Sweden & lots of other places ...

Martin: Hi Alan, how are you?

Alan: Very well, thank you. Just back from a good week at Linn HQ in Glasgow - retail conference, sales meets, live music, bars.... Next week is Hong Kong and Sydney, Australia

Martin: How long have you been working with LINN?

Alan: Fifteen years with the company and fourteen years in retail selling Linn before that

Martin: During that time were there any big moments in LINN's development that stand out?

Alan: Karma moving coil, LK1 and LK2 amplifier, Lingo, Karik and Numerik CD player, Kairn preamplifier, Klout amplifier, Ekos tonearm, CD12, Radikal, all Klimax electronics, Kan, Isobarik, Keltik, Komri, Akurate, Klimax loudspeakers 242, DS, DSM - it's a long list - we always aim to improve significantly over the previous version

Martin: You tried out my fancy guitar in the shop once and seems you were pretty handy with a guitar. Which one came first? The guitar or the LINN HiFi?

Alan: The guitar - my parents bought me one when I was about seven - my friend's uncle played and I wanted to do the same. I chose one in a music store and I think it was my birthday present. I was eighteen before I put my first separates hifi together

Martin: I heard you have a serious collection of Guitars .. how many do you have now .. any favourites?

Alan: Twenty five - my go-to electric is the Gibson Explorer - I have seven of them. My go-to acoustic is a Martin M36. I have just restored a 1943 Marwin archtop which was made by the Harmony Guitar Company in Chicago - that is a cool guitar. I've also just bought an Appalachian dulcimer - it was hand-made by a guy called Homer Ledford - he was the Gibson / Martin equivalent dulcimer maker of the last century

Martin: When I came to LINN for a training course some years ago, a retailer from Dubai said he had expected to find all of LINN's competitors products there as a reference for LINN to develop their own products. Obviously this wasn't the case! Chris, the LINN trainer, answered rather smugly .. ''we know what a guitar sounds like!''. That comment really hit home with me! What is special with respect to LINN's approach to development that consistently, over 40 years now, allows LINN to always be at the leading edge?

Alan: We never designed a hifi to sound different from another company's hifi. Ivor built a turntable - the LP12 - to make his own records sound more like real music. He knew the information was on the disc - he just had to design a record player that could get the music off. If he could have bought a record player that did the job then the LP12 would never have been made. This desire to replicate the original music is at the very heart of Linn. Everyone knows what music sounds like. No-one goes to live music and discusses the bass or the mid-range or the depth. They ask basic questions like are the musicians in tune and are they playing in time. Those are the same questions we ask of our hifi systems

Martin: Traditionally LINN has achieved it's top status from Engineering development with physical solutions; I almost take it for granted now that if I want the worlds best source product, it will be made by LINN. With LINN DS (digital streaming) it seems programming is the development tool at the forefront. Do you think this limits the possibilities for future sound improvement or open them up?

Alan: Seriously...no!! You ain't heard nothing yet !

Martin: I generally get disappointed with allot of modern recordings, can't explain it really! Lots of information but I just don't get goose bumps! I recently played 24 bit Eagles, Hotel California. It's totally dead ... something IS wrong! This is a complicated one so I'll ask for a Yes or No answer. Should studios just stop ''fanying'' around with MacBooks and endless mixing and get the Analogue tapes back out?

Alan: No - digital done properly is astonishing. Digital done badly is not astonishing. Just because something is released at 24 bit - and possibly just up sampled from 16 bit - does not guarantee high performance. Infact, if you go through the Linn Records 24 bit catalogue you can already hear huge improvements between early 24 bit and the current releases

Martin: Yes up-sampling and calling stuff 24 bit is cheeky! Though I just heard half a song of LINN's latest recording of Carol Kidd on the KDSM with 350A , it did sound great!


Martin: The mobile phone is now our digital camera, our filofax, our PC, our film and music streamer, our games console .... SONGCAST blows my mind and it's just a program ... it's code! DSM is an all singing all dancing product with outrageous performance. The future of HiFi is tidiness ... less boxes, more function, greater performance. A huge range of boxes will simply vanish from the home and the shop front ... maybe all the boxes will vanish!! How is this a threat and an opportunity for LINN?

Alan: It is not a threat. It is a huge opportunity. There is always a natural evolution - things get smaller, things get better. A huge market of music lovers exists - you can see that from the sheer number of downloads from Apple - over 10 billion. The real opportunity is aligning with these folks who have probably deliberately avoided the confusion that is most hifi shops and demonstrating to them how much better their music is through a proper system. These customers are already ahead of the game - tidiness, fewer boxes, functionality. Linn DSM is perfectly positioned for these customers....and quite a few of the traditional enthusiast as well !

Martin: Most people visiting my shop have to ask what I do when thy come in because they are expecting walls of speakers & boxes from a HiFi shop. They get several living rooms and in some rooms it's hard to find the HiFi. I sell one brand with relatively few products. With the trend in internet shopping, the dominance of price-based monster shops, the emergence of Apple into the HiFi sector, is the small budget retailer doomed to extinction and is the ''concept store'' with only the best brands, the only survivor?
Alan: There is room for everyone in the market albeit the ratios of one kind of retailer versus another kind of retailer will change dramatically. Customers are smart, well-informed, and their buying habits have, are, and will continue to change. Shopping will increasingly become more of a leisure activity so the shops that best survive will be the ones that take a customer on a fantastic journey, that shine in customer focus, service, and performance-led solutions. The rest you can get on the web...!

Martin: What's your favourite album & Why?

Alan: It is Marvin Gaye - What's Going On? Why - I have no idea, nothing that I can put into words. I love soul music and this puts everything I like about soul, American culture, musical reference points all in one place at the same time. It is my favourite album but does not include my favourite song - that honour hoed to Neil Young and Like A Hurricane. There's also another five thousand recordings I can go to when at home - all are fantastic in their own way. After all - there is no such thing as bad music!

Martin: Big thanks .. be good!

P.S. Don't ask me why some text is blue and other text is brown ... just shows you, 'brown is not always brown in the digital world, it is sometimes blue'.

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