Urika II! Linn just made vinyl even better
Sometimes we imagine ourselves as the Indiana Jones of audio, uncovering musical treasure that others thought was lost forever. With our latest Sondek LP12 upgrades, we’ve used cutting edge technology in our quest to reach our Holy Grail. We’ve made vinyl sound even better.
The Urika moment
Our Urika phono stage, launched in 2009 and housed inside the body of the Sondek LP12, brought improved clarity and detail by shortening the signal path between the tonearm and traditional out-board phono stages. It’s a wonderful addition to any LP12. And now we’ve found a way to improve it further.
The best made better
While the Klimax LP12 still extracts the most information it possibly can from the groove of the record, the Urika II now uses our cutting-edge digital signal processing technology to implement the RIAA curve in the digital domain in a way that’s far more precise.
It means lower distortion. Lower noise. And more music.
Because we keep the signal in the digital domain thereafter, the musical information that Urika II delivers is perfectly preserved between the phono stage and the downstream components. Connecting to a Linn DS player over Exakt Link, we then use our acclaimed Katalyst DAC technology to convert it into an analogue music signal at the highest possible quality.
That’s not all. We take the same approach with Urika II that we already do with our Exakt-enabled loudspeakers; we optimise each and every individual Urika II, correcting the variations inherent in the analogue input stage to ensure outstanding performance every time.
Your Linn specialist then further optimises Urika II to work with specific cartridge load values via an easy-to-use interface while sitting in your preferred listening position. There’s a list of pre-defined load values for popular cartridges, and custom values can be created too.
The science
You know us. We’re fearless in our use of technology. We don’t do tech for tech’s sake, to tick a box or put another logo on the packaging.
And we don’t just wonder if something’s possible: we measure in incredible detail to see what difference it makes, and most importantly of all we then use our ears to listen.
If it doesn’t deliver benefits we can both measure and hear, it doesn’t make it into our products—but as we’ve demonstrated over the last 45 years, if it makes the music better we’ll move mountains so that you can hear it too.
Learning the Lingo
We haven’t just made Urika better. We’ve improved our Lingo power supply too. Lingo is the logical first improvement to make to your Majik LP12, and we’ve used the technology developed for our extraordinary Radikal power supply to give Lingo a major upgrade.
The new Lingo has a new motor speed management system and uses digital processing technology to make the platter spin more accurately and more consistently. That’s crucial for music, of course: even the slightest speed variation affects the pitch, and a turntable that isn’t accurate is like a musical instrument that hasn’t been tuned properly.
Lingo is the source of your audio source, and the new model is neater, more compact and cleverer than ever. As with Urika II it delivers benefits you can measure, and benefits you can really hear.
Find out how you too can uncover the audio treasure buried in the groove of your vinyl collection.
