Ok, here is where I am. Today I brought home the Ayre C5xe and the Linn 2.1. After listening for 3 hours, I give a slight edge to the Linn on CD, and to the Ayre on SACD. I tried DVD-A in both, but the Linn choked on all 3 DVD-A discs, so I skipped that round. Overall, the Ayre seemed more solid on the bass. The Linn seemed to throw a wider soundstage, which was great on some recordings, but not so great on others. For example, on recordings where the Ayre seemed to compress the stage a bit, at least it was able to keep the vocalist in the center. The Linn, on the other hand, seemed to take these same vocalists and s-t-r-e-t-c-h them to the point where they were coming out of both the left and right speakers in an artificial way. Having said that, I must admit that on an SACD recording of Vivaldi's Four Season, the wide soundstage presented by the Linn player was really great. So in this respect, I have to agree with Steve's comment about the Linn and its ability to create a wide soundstage.
At this point, I am mostly just confused. I look back at my notes, and I see that my biggest critism of the Ayre (its somewhat narrow soundstage) is a mirror-image of my biggest complaint of the Linn (its too-wide soundstage on acoustic and vocal recordings). If I had to choose tonight, I would probably give the edge to the Ayre unit, mostly because of its general balance and the fact that it beats the Linn on price. My local Ayre dealer is also a dealer for Esoteric, so I think I will ask him for a demo of the X-01....Let's see if the big price difference also brings a noticeable performance difference. Unfortunately, he does not carry Classe, so I may have to find another source for a SACD-2 demo unit.
Despite my angst, I have to admit that I am having a lot of fun!
