The Linear Solution LPS912 Design for Sotm Products

[Superdad]

Hello:

I normally make it a policy to not comment on other manufacturer's products, especially those of competitors, be they larger or smaller firms.  There is plenty of room in the boutique audio marketplace for many companies to succeed and healthy competition is good for the consumer.

 

Yet in the case of The Linear Solution I feel compelled to speak up, and here is why:

 

It has nothing to do with some of the truly wild specifications given to the product listed above.

(Though 0.5 nanoVolts/rootHz is 0.0005µVolts and would be an order of magnitude quieter than the lowest noise regulators--discrete or integrated--on the planet, and their other specs are suspect as well.  Plus their modified TCXO and OCXO switches and routers go in the opposite direction with units, listing jitter for their clocks at 1picosecond, when any $0.75 clock will have less than a picosecond of jitter.)

 

It has to do with something that struck me when I visited their web site.  They have another product listed there, a 6-rail, 600 watt ATX-LPS, with bipolar (plus and minus 12V, 5V, and 3V) outputs, in a small 12 x 9 x 3 inch case, weighing 45 pounds. Here it is:

 

 

600 watts?  In that small case? 45 pounds?  You could fill that case with lead shot and it likely would not weight 45 pounds.

 

But that is not what bothers me and not why I am posting this.  It is because the power supply in the photographs is none other that an UpTone Audio JS-2!  Click on the below and look closely at the photograph:

 

See the small vertical lines that are part of the UpTone Audio logo?  See the identical grooved, machined aluminum feet?  See the reflections of the bottom case screws that are in exactly the place where they are on our supply?  And in Photoshop, adjusting the exposure and shadows/highlights of the darker inset image reveals plainly how they Photoshopped out the words UpTone Audio in the dark left of that image.  

Now I had not before seen that photo of our supply--sitting on some sort of quartz counter--but a quick Google image search turned up the original on a reseller's site (some place called The Music Room).  Here it is, with our complete logo plain to see:

 

 

Excuse me?!

Before I found the original photo, I shot off an e-mail to the Japanese company that supplies our chassis fully customized for the JS-2 (and our UltraCap LPS-1.2 and ISO REGEN).  Now I have spent over $200,000 with this supplier in the almost 4 years we have worked together, so I knew they would never supply cases to someone with so similar a graphic element to our logo, and certainly not on the same series case and to someone in the audio marketplace.  Really I was embarrassed at even asking them about it, but the export sales director not only assured me they would never do something like that, he said that The Linear Solution had never purchased any enclosures from them.  All they did was make an inquiry.

 

Obviously I will be contacting Adrian Wun, the owner of The Linear Solution (and prior importer of the Taiwanese KECES brand power supplies), to demand that he remove the image.  

 

But really, 6-rails, 600 watts, 45 pounds in that little box?  That and their other suspicious specifications for their products--combined with their blatant Photoshopping of our product--ought to send up caution flags for those considering purchase.  

Most manufacturers who are proud of what they are offering will show what is under the hood.  I'd be curious to see just what is inside the LPS912 that is the subject of this thread.  Might be less impressive than their claimed specs...

 

--Alex C.

[Superdad]

Thanks, but as you can tell from my post I am more irked that flattered.