Linn Products, the maker of arguably the finest-quality home entertainment and hi-fi systems in the world, has swung back into profit after a "paradigm shift in customer behaviour" and a change of focus from CDs to downloadable music.

Linn Products, the maker of arguably the finest-quality home entertainment and hi-fi systems in the world, has swung back into profit after a "paradigm shift in customer behaviour" and a change of focus from CDs to downloadable music.

Ivor Tiefenbrun, the company's founder and chairman, told The Herald that the turnaround had followed a "flight to quality in a tough market" which, he said, had driven more customers to Linn's high-end systems.

Linn, which has its headquarters at Eaglesham in East Renfrewshire, unveiled a pre-tax profit of £500,000 for the eight months to the end of June, compared with a loss of £2.1m for the 12 months to the end of October 2007, which had reflected a jump in costs.

While still a far cry from the surplus of £2.1m recorded in its 2000 financial year, the company also said the turn-around had been achieved through better margins and that it was now reaping the benefits of a strategic review that included making "significant" redundancies.

The company's accounts reveal that staff numbers during the eight-month period had fallen to 183, compared with 211 in the year to the end of October 2007.

Tiefenbrun started Linn in 1972 from a factory in the gritty Glasgow suburb of Castlemilk and ever since has manufactured extraordinary hi-fi systems for "discriminating people for whom sound quality matters".

Since 1986, he has operated from a base in the Renfrewshire village of Eaglesham, and until last year he kept the Castlemilk plant as a metal foundry where the casings for Linn's hi-fi systems were made.

Linn's systems - priced between £1200 and £2m-plus - have been used in Aston Martins, super-yachts and in the homes of some of the "richest, most intelligent and most creative people on the planet".

Songwriter David Bowie and actress Sharon Stone, for example, are customers.

Like Linn's first product, the Sondek LP12 turntable, which defied, challenged and eventually revolutionised accepted hi-fi wisdom, Tiefenbrun is now seeking to do the same with downloadable music.

He said sales of the com-pany's recently launched range of DS digital stream players were "going extremely well".

The ground-breaking Linn DS digital stream player is already regarded among hi-fi aficionados as the world's highest performance digital music player.

The company claims it will "transform the hi-fi industry and how people experience music in the same way as the Linn Sondek LP12 did 35 years ago".

Tiefenbrun said: "We expected to sell a few hundred a year and so far we've done a couple of thousand.

"In a market as tough as this one, with recession looming, I think people are asking themselves what really matters.

"They are choosing their priorities, and at the top of the list they're coming up with spending time with family and friends instead of big holidays and new houses.

"It's these kinds of attitudes that are driving people toward the kind of high-end product that we produce."

He added: "The future for us is downloadable streaming, which has become the way people now want their music. Linn is the first company in the world doing this with a hi-fi product, as opposed to computer systems, where the quality isn't really much to speak of.

"Three years ago, we discontinued our top-end CD player and people thought we were crazy - but look at the way more and more people are getting and listening to their music now. Our DS systems produce a quality that most people can't even imagine."

Meanwhile, the company's accounts reveal that as part of its strategic review Linn sold off its premises at Drakemire Drive, Castlemilk - the birthplace of the company - and for the first time, had established "full end-to-end production capability on our state of the art site in Waterfoot, giving us control of all the vital processes in design, manufacturing, distribution and sales that we need to differentiate our world-class product".

Revenue for the eight-month period came in at £12.5m, against £23m for the year to the end of October.

Tiefenbrun noted in the company's accounts: "We look forward with anticipation to meeting the challenges that an ever-demanding and discriminating market place present, and I and my directors are confident the company will continue to further enhance its reputation as the world leader."