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Kremlin & Kout Service?

d16b said:
FYI and that of most.

I have been struggling with repairs of SMPS 'Brilliant' on my Karik, Numerik and Kairn, they all gave up the ghost within 6m of each other.

Struggle is the word.

Got one fixed so the Karik is working but the Numerik and Kairn are dead regardless of power supplies being 'fixed'.

The Kairn appears to be an area of cooked circuitry around the battery in the display board. The Numerik, the research continues.

Anyway long story short. No schematics with true values available. SMC's all have values on other than capacitors and so a call to Linn to see what I could find out.

1. Everything before Akurate is now redundant and unrepairable (by Linn)

2. They don't release diagrams/values (they don't want people touching their kit - safety or?)

3. Caps are their little secret they hang onto like grim death

4. Asked about 5103 etc - don't buy second hand they are totally beyond repair now

5. Akurate will be dropping off the repairable list shortly.

6. When my Sizmik died I was told to buy a new one, I opened the amp and saw it was a Mosfet that had blown up, asked linn they
said it was unobtainium and as such, dead. Found photo of board, took the number, ordered the Mosfet from a component firm
simple replacement and saved myself £2k.

Are Linn the ONLY UK high end hi-fi manufacturer that is of the opinion people have the money to buy tens of thousands on
exotic kit and have it written off when Quad, Naim, NAD, YBA etc etc are all serviceable.


Being told Linn now make their own chips and top end bursting through the bugger me prices doesn't fill me with anything like
glee

From a hifi point of view, British culture is one of trading up as experience, understanding and disposable income increases.

I started with hifi at 12, Goldring Lenco, Shure, Rogers, Wharfdale and moved on from there. Many exotic and many stupid purchases
(like getting rid of vinyl for Mission and Quad CD's). Many sad memories of kit I traded that I wish I hadn't - Mitchell, FAMCO Nuance,
Spendor BC's, 3009, Audiolab etc etc (all still recommended kit and all repairable)

Oh and nope and if any part of my formerly £50k of kit is to be replaced I now have decided will NEVER be replaced by any new LINN kit even IF I won the lottery

Talk about alienating a client base
Click to expand...
Linn have recently launched their in - house designed DAC chip called Organik.
i upgraded my Linn Klimax DS streamer from Katalyst dac to their new Organik FPGA dac chip.
it's not cheap , but the performance is outstanding.
 
denni55 said:
Linn have recently launched their in - house designed DAC chip called Organik.
i upgraded my Linn Klimax DS streamer from Katalyst dac to their new Organik FPGA dac chip.
it's not cheap , but the performance is outstanding.
Click to expand...
I bet it is that good.

I am too old to make an investment of that magnitude (financially), there is no likelihood of me enjoying it for any length of time and regardless of the comments from dealers - you can’t take it with you. The choice is wife, kids or Linn.

No contest

I also wouldn’t invest for a but, the but being. We keep moving on with Apple and their ‘new’ M chips are in house, nothing can be done with the boards, if they go wrong - lump hammer. They did that when I first moved to them with in house chips. Cost was the issue and they binned those for Intel (again) and all the old kit simply couldn’t function (more door stops).

There is a post on here regarding a ticketed return to Linn for a streamer (current) advertised as playing Tidal. It won’t - in house chip can’t cope with the volume of data and therefore can’t play the stuff. Linn say it’s Tidal’s fault and there is nothing they can do.

Hence my ‘advisory’ post (at the start), which some call a moan or rant.

I should have gone with Naim, YBA etc etc.

Lesson learnt.

Enjoy your system...
 
per flemming said:
Unlikely
Click to expand...
Linn won’t fix anything on their defunct list. LK, Kairn/Klout/Numerik, DS, 5103, CD12 and onwards to Akurate. Others fall off the list back end of this year. Schematics not available. One engineer said he ‘might’ be able to fix my kit if he had a working device to take readings off.

There maybe some Naim kit they can’t repair, maybe. Rega is down to laser availability apparently but, same engineer said Rega keep a spare laser for every device registered with them after sale. Karik used Hitachi laser, originals ARE available (not from Linn) generiks only last a limited time. Sizmik - it’s usually the overheated MOSFET - not available from Linn (but is elsewhere) + they didn’t want to risk fixing any further board damage - they couldn’t guarantee their work. Brilliant SMPS - caps usually according to engineers + DOZ blog, the Y explodes, maybe the chip (Texas Instruments), you can get these ‘elsewhere’ only 30% repair success rate (someone is trying to ‘manufacture’ a generic but it will cost £1k and at that point… But then again, when I asked about replacing the Kairn wth a DS, 5103 Linn said - totally unfixable even for engineers.

No happy thoughts
 
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