Upgrading my Linn set up HELP advice please

Well, take Lugnut's advice and try to find a Supratek Syrah. That's the elsewhere I was thinking of.

As for an integrated... if it were me looking, I'd want to hear an Audiomat (French), or for less money, a Cayin or HIT Audio (Chinese). These are tube machines with around 30 wpc depending on the model. If I preferred solid state and maybe more watts I'd want to hear Vecteur, YBA (both French), a SimAudio (Canadian like me) or a Shanling SLM-40 (Chinese). But I don't know... the Pretek / Powertek is good equipment and replacing your Pretek with a Syrah might cost no more than any of these options and give yousound just as good, with an easy upgrade to the amp later on.

It's hard to be asked to recommend a whole system. I don't know what kind of sound you like. I had a Shanling CD-T100 player (about $2G) that I liked a lot, and in Canada you can get two other Shanlings which are equally good value for money at lower price points. As for monitors, I'm listening to an Aurum Cantus Leisure 2 pair at the moment and they're very nice. I would also be interested in Harbeth's current LS 3/5A-type, and a long time ago I heard the Totem Model 1 and enjoyed it, but it needs lots of power.

It's a pleasure and a compliment to be asked for advice and I respect any naive person who has the courage to say so.

that canadian hifi is very good stuff.
when i went home to the uk in 2002 i went to an audio show in london,they had a Sim Audio Moon set up....a cd player into a intergrated running into an expensive pair of tannoys (believe it or not)...
the sound was unreal!! the speakers absolutly dissapeared,it sounded like the sound was coming from the walls or was it the air? it was just around me...Weird!!!!!
beutifull sounding and very good looking kit.

Yes, I've heard that effect from Moon equipment before. You feel that you are in a room with invisible musicians. Reminds me of a passage in, I think, the Morte d'Arthur: Galahad or Percival, in the Grail castle, hears celestial music from an unknown source.

It's certainly very pleasant not to be distracted from the music by the audio gear. My own system is getting that way now too, I'm happy to say, so the Holy Grail of great music from invisible artists can be achieved with stuff from other manufacturers too.

I think you would be extremely happy with the Classik and Tukans. The additional cost of purchasing a used Classik-T or K after selling your other gear (and interconnects) should be nominal -- if any.

There is something so simple and complete about just one box and one pair of speakers. Forget the audiophile descriptions -- the sound will simply be more integrated than what you have now. You will also be adding a tuner and the convenience of one remote to control it all.

Also -- if you ever decide to go multichannel, you could keep the Classik/Tukan combination in you office or bedroom.

Linn is moving away from Classic series and the movie version is being discounted, the Di should be next. Now on to my opinion; I believe the unidisk-sc will inherit the classics role. At 5 to 6 thousand dollars (from Linn help line in Jax) the sc will be much cheaper than the 2.1 or 1.1 (8-12k) but still includes a truly universal player(sacd,cd,dvda,etc). Unlike the other unidisks the sc also includes a multi channel preamp with digital, analog and tos-link inputs with DD, DTS and DPLII processing(no hall,jazz club,action or deep vacuume of spacee modes though). Preamp is active but the power amps are BYO.