Linn Products (2007-11)

Title: Linn Digital Amplification - FPGA solution
Research Engineer: Christopher Morrison
Sponsor:Linn Products, Eaglesham, East Renfrewshire
Academic Supervision: Prof Bob Stewart & Dr Stephan Weiss
Industrial Supervision: Sandy Colville & Ian Wilson

Linn Products Ltd is an independent engineering company based in Glasgow, Scotland, focused on the design, manufacture and sale of complete precision engineered sound and vision components for music and home theatre systems.

The job of a sound system is to reproduce music. The better it does this, the better it sounds - the more benefit it offers. The best sound systems can change your life.

All Linn products are designed to deliver exceptional audio performance and to bring you the ultimate music and movie experience.

Precision engineering, attention to detail and a keen understanding of customer needs shape every component, from the most complex home theatre solution to the most discreet music system. With this performance commitment in mind, Linn are now developing an FPGA based digital amplification system

FPGA’s are already used by Linn within their product range to implement a number of main technology blocks, including network control, networked media, over-sampling, volume control and digital crossovers.

A solution for high end audio on a single FPGA with discrete DAC’s, is in place currently at Linn. The next stage is to integrate a PCM to PWM modulator into this system.

The research undertaken as part of the EngD will be to develop this PCM to PWM modulator within an FPGA framework. The modulator should fit within Linn’s existing FPGA infrastructure using the coding and testing processes and standards already in place.