I've just finished school and I'm gonna do loads of work over the summer months so I should have a good bit of cash fairly soon. With it, I plan to buy a new seperates system to replace my very average sony midi system. Pricewise, I'm not exactly sure how much I'll have, initially about £1500 or a bit over. If a particularly good setup would cost more than that then I'd rather buy some parts and expand later. I'm probably gonna buy the pre-amp/power-amp and cd first then speakers later. I've been looking at the 'Kolektor' from Linn for my pre-amp. If I was buying that I would probably go with the LK85 power-amp from Linn too. Both cost around £495 each. Can anyone say anything about these products? Any better suggestions? I've heard that Naim do good amps too. I was up at a friend's house who is using a Naim amp and it sounded pretty nice. Anyway,moving on to the source... I'd quite like to keep a full Linn system, well, I wouldn't be that bothered, but I hear that full Linn systems sound great. I've also heard a lot of very good things about the Linn Genki CD-player. The only thing is that its horriibly expensive, well, for me anyway (£995). I suppose I could get it, and then use awful speakers until I could afford decent ones. I dunno. As for speakers, I really don't have any ideas. There is such a big choice really. Linn Ninka perhaps. They are £995. Which would mean having to put up with bad speakers with the rest of the system for about one or two months. I suppose a two month wait is maybe worth it considering I plan to get use of this system for a good few years. Although, I don't think they are that great for the money. The total cost of the system would end up being just a bit short of £3k. I'm not quite sure if I want to spend that much. I've not even been in to the Linn shop for a listen yet, but from what I've heard already, I really like. Basically just looking for suggestions/criticism. Thanks.
Linn kit is surposed to be great, but you should auction other kit as you may find there are alternatives you like better. For power amplifiers also look at : Arcam P75 ~£380 Arcam P85. ~£530 Rotel RB1070 ~£500 Rotel RB1090 ~£850 For intergrated amplifiers also look at : Cyrus 6 Integrated amplifier ~ £600 DiVA A75 Plus Amplifier ~£470 DiVA A85 Amplifier ~£800 ROKSAN Caspian amplifier ~£900
Yeah, thanks, I was definitely gonna have a listen to some Naim/Cyrus/Arcam kit too. I don't really know much about Rotel, but I'll look into it. The good thing is that the Linn factory is just outside Glasgow and theres a nice Linn shop in Glasgow for me to go in a have a good listen.
OMG - Thats a lot of £££ to spend on an hi-fi if you haven't got that much cash anyway! I love my Cyrus kit though..... it's the poor mans Linn
Lol, a very nice hi-fi setup is something that I would like and wouldn't mind spending money on. I listen to music constantly really, well when I'm in the house, so it would be a big investment. I don't watch TV so the money that other people may be spending on big fancy TVs I can afford to spend on a nice Hi-Fi. I should probably have enough cash for the amps and cd in a 2-3 months. Is Linn stuff generally better than Cyrus then, if you have the money? The Cyrus kit gets very good reviews and I wasn't sure what was better. Obviously, I will listen to both and see what I think, but generally? I still need to make a speaker shortlist though. I don't really have any ideas.
The Cyrus kit is very good but die hard Linn fans will tell you that Cyrus was and still is chasing Linn. I personally think once you get past a certain price point unless your listening the the most refined of music from the best recordings it really is very difficult to hear any real differences.... what sort of music do you listen to?
I actually probably agree with you jetsetjimbo about the difficulty in noticing much different after a certain point. I expect that any difference will be very small unless you are listening to some sort of classical orchestra type thing I'm into Indie/Rock. Stuff like Belle & Sebastian, Idlewild, Placebo, Mull Historical Society, Biffy Clyro etc. With things like Placebo the difference wouldnt be noticable I expect. But I think with all the instrumental bits in a lot of the b&s songs and some of the finer vocals would see a benefit.
It's been a couple of years now since I researched hi-fi in any depth as that was when I last bought some kit. But at the time I was well into it (I didn't use bit then so had time for other things ) and researched what to buy throughly - like for 12 months and came to a couple of conclusions.... Firstly the vast majority of manstream (ish) music tend to be fairly compressed recordings - i.e. frequencies are compressed down in the mixing process to improve their 'sound' when played on standard car stereos and mid range midi systems. The problem is when you come to listen to such recordings on high end equipment (such as Linn and Naim amongst others) with a very 'revealing' sound the end result can sound very unforgiving, harsh and tiresome to listen to. Where as when listening to well recorded classical music, what some would argue hi-fi like Linn is made for, on such a revealing system you get the music in it most detailed and open form. At the time Oasis' recording were notorious for this. It's therefore important to buy something which is suited to the sort of music you listen to. I went for a cyrus am that was well regarded for it's warm sound and a Marantz 63 MKII k-SI cd player (at the time arguably the finest cd player under a grand) as it had a very detailed and open sound. The end result was a nice balance of the two which fit in with my musical taste. I guess in the end you need to get out there and listen to some stuff but make sure you spend at least half an hour, maybe even an hour listening to any system your considering, at the end of the day if the sales man in the shop thinks you're going to be spending £2K+ they'll let you stop over for the night if you want and don't for get you should spend 10% of your total budget on speaker cable and interconnects The look of the stuff is pretty important as well imo and I think that the Cyrus stuff is to hi-fi what sff pcs are to computing.... I envy you listening to all that amazing kit
Oh dear, that's really dissapointing knowing that mainsteam music tends to be compressed. Well, I've got a few months till I'll be making any purchases anyway, so that gives me plenty of time to have a good look around and make sure that I buy something that is a pleasure to listen to. I actually love the really simple black 'this product sounds so good that we dont need to bother how it looks' type look of the Linn products. If you get what I mean? The thin Cyrus stuff is certainly very nice too. When I get down to the point where I'm pretty sure of what I'm gonna buy, if I am spending £2000+ I would hope that the retailer would allow me to try out the kit at home before actually commiting to a purchase. Thanks for the advice and very interesting information about recordings etc.
