Been looking at 'gon and notice that there are few Ayre D-1xe on sale at somewhat attractive prices. Right now I use a Linn Klimax DS to feed a speaker system with headphone amps connected via loop out from the preamp using RCA.

If I were to get an Ayre player, I would use that as a dedicated source for my headphone amps using the balanced connection, instead of RCA. I have heard Ayre's current line of CDPs, but have not done any comparsion with the Linn (never saw the point). Will I be totally bumbed going from a top Linn to a very old top Ayre? Anyone heard both and can comment?

I'd say about -8.3%

What is the margin of error on that?

+/- 104%

So to clarify for the OP, the Ayre could be 112.3% worse or 95.7% better than the Linn. Hope that's helpful!

Or you could just buy the thing and decide for yourself.

Edited October 26, 201114 yr by jvlgato

The Linn coming from the land of Scotland will have a firm sense of peatyness on the aural palate with a touch of caramel after thought lingering in the inner cochlea. The Ayre being an American unit will bring back memories of cheeseburgers when initially plugged in, but after some burn in this unpleasantness will only be an after thought in the temporal lobe.

The margin of error on the 8.3% decline in quality is 104% so wouldn't that mean that the end sound quality would be somewhere between 83.068% and 100.332% of the Linn.

I'm not a fan of either. I've heard that the Nuforce UDac smokes them both

Margin of error is supposed to be in the same units as the original value so John is correct.

The margin of error on the 8.3% decline in quality is 104% so wouldn't that mean that the end sound quality would be somewhere between 83.068% and 100.332% of the Linn.

I'm not a fan of either. I've heard that the Nuforce UDac smokes them both

Yikes!

Margin of error is supposed to be in the same units as the original value so John is correct.

Whew! Glad to hear it! Stats was never a forte. I actually think deepak's assessment is the most accurate. I actually laughed out loud after reading his!