TooManyCatweazles

Thx for the inspiration Paul. The Lady of this castle just brought up the subject, but I can hardly put any of the following needful things on my XMAS wishlist (without getting sacked): 2 x A3200 amps, or better 3 x A2200 amps, replacing my C6100/D KEBOX, replacing my AEBOX6 Ekos/SE, replacing my Ekos 2 Keel, replacing my Kore The Ikea Günstig - while being in a reasonable price range, just as the name implies - might be mistaken as a promise to spend less time listening music, and more doing household stuff like cooking, and cleaning the kitchen afterwards, or should I better use the term sanitizing? Hobby psychologists know all to well, that frustration is caused by unrealistic expectations. Furniture polish just came to my mind, ideal to clean the belt and running area of the LP12 subplatter, but again - see above. XMAS is a minefield, methinks! 😜

Your assumption about Tidals way of thinking maybe correct. But AFAIK the growth in bandwidth even beats Moore's law (processor power at the same price duplicates every 18 months) so if bandwidth was an issue, it should go away very soon. I still remember the days, when I connected my terminal at the university with a 300 baud modem to the Regional Computer Center of Lower Saxony. A few year later I read an article in a PC magazine, that explained, why 33 kbit/s is the absolute physical limit for telephone landlines. Bang, came the US Robotics 54k modem. Today I'm enjoying 100 Mbit/s download bandwith on a 25 Mbit/s contract, that has been upgraded free of charge to honour my loyalty. The provider could offer more, if I was only willing to pay more. But I'm not running an eCommerce server in my home which would need a high upload bandwidth, anyway.

Why should they? Linn have always taken a stance for open systems. MQA is very much the opposite. Rather than supporting MQA Linn and us should ditch Tidal. There are alternatives available.

There is no single favourite album for me. But one that certainly wowed me, and found it's way on the platter quite frequently is Medicine Music by Bobby McFerrin. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_Music I had assumed, that the recording was using heavy overdubbing, to create the impression of the voice. A few year after I had puchased the album, I had the opportunity to hear Bobby McFerrin live at the wonderful MUC (Music and Congress Hall) in Lübeck, Germany. It was sort of an aftershock to realize, what this artist can do with his voice without studio tricks. And he managed to motivate the whole audience to sing along with him. The general prejudice about Northern Germans has it that we are cold tempered, and hard to impress. Looks like we are a bit picky rather, as he demonstrated on that wonderful evening 😉

While I agree with Thomas's advice to skip intermediate steps (I just upgraded from my Lingo2 to a machined Radikal, this summer), I'd also stress that 'breaking the hierarchy' is ok, if you can get a bargain on pre-loved equipment. If you are one of the lucky Linn owners with a good dealer within reach, build a relationship, and communicate your desire. Ekos 2, Kore, but sometimes even a Radikal in the Akurate case, may pop-up at your dealer by a trade-in. Buying used gear from a trusted dealer is less risky, than on the web. This is especially true with delicate stuff, like a tonearm, or things that need professional installation, like a subchassis, or a Radikal, or Lingo 4. And for the time being, listen to the music!

Sad news, thanks for sharing!

The homes are out of level too, I'm afraid. 😬

Out of curiousity @eddiel, does your LP12 feature the Trampolin base, or the Solid base? As the Trampolin feet are already "elastic" (I'm unsure, whether they have springs?), adding another elastic medium underneath appears not like a good idea to me. According to the description, the Orea should not be placed under the feet, though. But as they are machined from steel, they appear in conflict with Linns light weight approach. I can only guess, as I've neither seen, nor heard these feet. But it's tempting to speculate, that they work best with devices, which like to be placed on a high mass support.

My take on this subject matter is a bit different: 1. I don't see a benefit in using a NAS to store / serve digital music in the first place (unless one already owns a NAS for other reasons, like a digital workplace.) The perceived benefit of a NAS, to provide access to any computer on the respective network, does not materialize in my home. The other perceived benefit, that you may have a RAID in your NAS does not really help either, as a RAID is no guarantee against loss of information. I have seen mirrored discs failing at my workplac's computer centre, so you always want to have an independent backup strategy anyway. In my case this is provided by portable discs, with a USB3 interface. From an ecological point of view, a NAS would need less energy, than my computer. I offset this by a 100% ecological power-provider. Thus, what I use is a dedicated HDD in my desktop computer to store the digital music, and minimserver as a streaming service. 2. I did try to store music on the SSD (the one my operating system runs on). Comparing it with the same file served from the HDD, I liked the HDD better. The result may be biased, by dual use of the SSD vs a dedicated HDD? Anyway, it put me off from buying SSDs to store my music. If one can trust the marketing language of Melco, they use special SDDs in their devices, not the regular ones, you'd buy for a NAS. 3. Speaking of Melco: I burroughed a Melco NAS from my trusted dealer, but could not hear any benefit. In fact, higher res files from my computer's HDD via PowerLan sounded much better than CD quality files from the Melco, which was connected directly to my DSM. Thus, I did not buy the Melco. Sorry, for making your decision more complex. But if you have a Desktop PC already, just spending on a proper dedicated HDD and saving your money to buy more music may be an alternative to consider! Happy listening, TMC

With the Katalyst upgrade option suspended, or cancelled by Linn, in the aftermath of the AKM factory fire, we obviously need to re-evaluate the original question. The resale appeal of any DS without Katalyst has just taken a hard hit I should say.

Pretty true. And from my experience I would like to add, that the DAC itself is less important, than the way how it is implemented into the supporting architecture. I recently sold my 30 yrs old Madrigal CD2 player, which sported a very clever implementation of a Burr-Brown DAC, that was pretty popular those days. BB themselves called it a 'reference implementation'. Other vendors using the same chip were far off in their sonic results. Before I put the player on sale, I auditioned it in my system using analog out, and digital out. It still shined after all those years. Thus, getting an implementation right takes probably a pretty expensive meticulous trial and error process. Once you got it right, it should last for many years. Therefore, replacing the AKM DACs in near future must be pretty much unwanted by Linn's product management.

Good point @Matteo. That's actually what I used between Uphorik and DSM.

I agree with Thomas. Before I did my big summer upgrade, I was running my Krystal with a Uphorik. I bought the Uphorik almost new, and/or the previous owner did not use the MC branch? Anyway, the sound was not satisfactory in the beginning, and the most musical result was off the Linn recommendations for Krystal settings. After playing records for quite a while, I noticed a shift. When I tried to find the best settings once more, I finally arrived at Linn's recomended values. Stay patient, once the Uphorik get's more hours on its clock, the sound should improve.

Very similar feelings here. Like @arm I upgraded to Klimax Radikal, and Urika 2, which earned me a free Karousel on top. Replacing Kore by Keel and/or Ekos by Ekos SE may come next, unless I commit to better amplification. I never had a chance to audition the Chakra 6100 vs say a pair of A3200s. On the other hand, replacing my AEbox by a KEbox might be a smart move, hierarchy-wise? I'm probably enjoying the music until an upcoming promotion checks any of the boxes. Just a few years to the 50th anniversary.

My trial was before the move to SOv2. I started with a copy of my original room optimization, and added the sub in Konfig. Lately, I was about to give it another try with SOv2, together with my dealer. He planned to visit another customer close to my place, and combine this. But on my latest call he was very sceptical due to his experiences with other sub experiments. As he appeared to be a bit exhausted these days, I postponed this experiment. Looks like he has been fitting too many Karousels, to get enough time to relax. We need to protect our Linn fettlers, don't we?