Linn Components

"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

I ended up ordering the Darts. To be frank I liked them all. Unfortunately no dealer where I live loans equip to audition at home so all of my impressions are by deduction. I have chronicled this on my system thread. In any case, Gryphon had a very fullsome bass. Best of the lot. I didn't know my speakers (the dealer happened to have the same set) could do that! Driving and perhaps a bit of a mid bass bump but very pleasing indeed. Everything else was very good too but top air a tiny bit lacking and a sense of delicacy when required was a not as good as the other two IMO. The ASR had that air thing going to the nth degree and there was a sense of you being transported to there as opposed to muscians being transported to your room. Bass may have been a tad light. Transparent and extremely quiet.

Dart: what can one say: you may have heard many say its the the perfect match btwn tubes and solid state. yes and no. It had a sweetness of tone, remarkable sound stage (ASR too), but when needed bass slammed. very fast and you could hang on to the decays (can't wait to try it with my EMM gear and play some SACDs) in the end, it just made me listen to the music. It may not be the most neutral of all (and indeed the term neutral is used so much that I think its starting to lose its meaning) but I fell in love with it.

But all three were exceptional. I think it comes down to personal tastes. Dart did it for me but you may differ.