Linn Components

I love Linn gear. I should never have sold my system last year. I will be back again.

My experience is that Linn doesn't have that audiophile sound where you hear every naunce of air and irrelevant detail. Instead the music develops. There is all the detail present without focusing on the exteranious information. The music comes forth. If you are into showing of your chrome high performance engine, fine...but if you want a sleeper street racer that blows away the competition get Linn.

Mike

"My experience is that Linn doesn't have that audiophile sound where you hear every naunce of air and irrelevant detail. Instead the music develops. There is all the detail present without focusing on the exteranious information. The music comes forth."

This is a nice comment and I think there is a lot of truth in it. My Ikemi, for instance, does not provide all the detail I heard in an Esoteric DV-50 I brought home to try. But the extra detail in the Esoteric did not add up to a better, more coherent musical message. Perhaps it was just because I was accustomed to the Ikemi, but I found it more involving and more musical.

My owner ship of Linn Karin, Linn Karik and Linn Numeric was under a year. This was in 92-93. These units were broken in over 2 months and the sound was not impressive at all. My dealer had me upgrade to Linn SmartPower Supplies, still disappointing. I compared these to my older Cambrige Audio front end and these at less than half of the price were light years ahead of my Linns. Compared to Sonic Frontier also, no match. From experiances I do not feel that these Linn pcs were anything special. Linn surely fooled me. Perhaps, current products from Linn is much more superior, but there no way I will ever give them a listen. These Linn flagship pcs were dry, flat and lifeless.

I have had the Klimaxx mono blocks for years and was happy. Recently juts having upgraditis so to speak I have auditioned some others including Gryphon Encore, NHB 108, ASR Emitter Exlusive2 and was stunned by what I was missing. A very large improvement in quality. Bass, warmth, macor & micro dynamics, inner detail, transients...still experimenting, but the Linns WILL be gone after this journey.

Henry, of the three amps you auditioned, Gryphon, ASR, Dart,
which did you like best and why?

Bart