Linn players withstanding the rigors of time

I was Ikemi user.....the unit was sold. Linn character is very good staging and music body. Super quality on the high and mid level. Bass is clear, alright, but not as great as fame gears like Sonic Frontiers SFCD1 or Meridian 508.24

Listening to vocal, I think Ikemi is very good in performing light jazz singer like Carol Kidd, or other female singer. Whereas male vocal will be losing a bit of man feel.

Also, 1 more complain is, it doesnt show up the playing time of each song titles. May be I havent utilize the Ikemi enough.

Nealhood, I own both, an Ikemi and a Genki. As far as to the sound, the Genki will give you about 95% of the Ikemi
performance at half the price. The Ikemi will give you an
metal tray, and balanced output, if you have use for them,
and dual digital outputs. The owner's manual says that they share the same laser and converter. The Genki, in my opinion
is the best bet, read this month WHAT HIFI, it was chosen
overal winner in it's class. I heard an CD12 at my dealer,
it failed to convince me to pay the extra $16,400.00 over the Ikemi. If you have $9,000.00 for a use one, consider the
new Unidisk. The target price is $8,000.00, it will support
cd, dvd, dvd-a and sacd. My dealer told me it's superior to the Ikemi on cd, very close to the CD-12 on cd and it will
put to shame the CD-12 on sacd. Finally, I have owned a lot
of Linn gear, they have never failed to bring about 55% of the original cost after a few years of use.

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).

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.