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Linn players withstanding the rigors of time

It seems like the Linn players, Genki, Ikemi and model 12 are standing fast through the rigors time. These models still sell quickly and are worth at least half their list price. I notice that the CD-12 brings approx. $9K on the used market, and very quickly. Now you might say that that it cost $20K new but, the fact is that it must be a very good player to bring $9K today. This is especially significant when there is so much competition with all kinds of the "latest and greatest" technology included as well as being revised about every other time one visits their web sites.

Do these Linn players share a family sound characteristic? I would like to know the sonic differences between them if anyone has been able to listened to the trio. And also, for those that have a Linn player, how do you like it?
nealhood
Post removed 
mikelavigne
2,216 posts
 
the new Linn Unidisc is NOT close to the 24-bit version of the CD-12 on cd. i just sold my Linn CD-12 on Audiogon and it is still the best redbook player out there. no combo universal player with video will approach it. i heard the Unidisc at CES and it is not much better than the Ikemi on cd IMHO.

that said, my opinion is that the difference between very good redbook performance and the very best redbook performance is not that much.....which is why i switched to the Meitner. the Meitner is waaaay better than anything else digital on sacd, and very, very close to the CD-12 on cd.

here is another viewpoint

to answer your question.....all the Linn cdps are excellent and combine great performance and usability. also, in digital, a properly designed one-box unit has typically better performace than 2-box units. the fact that Linn is a bigger company than other high end manufacturers and is able to put more engineering and design into it's products in this case does seem to make a difference (it isn't always that way).
hepl
147 posts
 
Jeff, I feel the difference is in the midrange, particulary
with acoustic recordings. On the other hand, you will only notice it on high quality cds, record quality is what I mean. Like Mikelavigne states, the difference in price between an Ikemi and the Unidisk is huge, more than double,
but the difference in sound is very subtle. Some friends of mine has gotten out of this "hobby" after spending fortunes,
and I mean that, because the difference in sound quality they got from systems costing about six high figures weren't
proportional to their previous systems. To round it up, if
were in the marked for a cd player with a 2k budget, I get
an used Ikemi. If my budget were 1k an used genki would make me very happy. One last note, as far as linn gear goes,
I have found that the people who own them really do take good care of them. Over the years I have bought used Kairns(2), Klouts(6), Keltiks(1), AV5150(2) and LK-240(4), never got a problem. All of them were in a 8/10 or better cosmetically and 10/10 operationally. Good luck.
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