Sounds OK but basically a cheap tin box with mechanicals and buttons like a 100 dollar player.I bought one used to give it a try but sold it after a month I can not believe the hype that LINN gets on their high end equipment very disappointing.

Poorly made piece of equipment

Review Summary:
When I purchased this player two years ago, I really wondered if I would get my money's worth considering the price tag of $3500. After two years of daily listening I can confidently say that it has been a solid investment. I have this unit paired with a Krell Kav-400xi integrated amp and B&W 604-S3 speakers. I cannot convey how much I am enjoying this setup. When I purchased the Linn I had spent some time researching and listening to as many players as I could find available. I personally believe that the Linn shines above many other high end players. The player has the uncanny ability to retreive data from the cd unlike any other I have heard. I was impressed by several cd players during my search including Esoteric, Marantz, Classe, and SimAudio. These players were awesome and the were very expensive. Again, after hearing so many players I easily chose the Linn soley based on the way it reproduced the recordings. The player seems to go about its work in an effortless fashion. Bass response is dead on in terms of both clarity and accuracy. Vocals and midrange are delivered with ease and sound very present but yet not too forward or overbearing. Highs are extremely clear, well presented, and very, very easy on the ears! Nothing at all harsh with this cd player; not even close. The player has a very quiet (black) background, exhibits an excellent sense of timing and delivery, and will pull you into the recording like the Pied Piper! The transport mechanism is sturdy and doesn't make a sound when opening and closing. As far as the pretty blue display; If the unit was sitting at eye level and the listener was within ten feet everything would be wonderful. My unit is about three feet above the floor and I usually need to bend and get within six feet of the player to see the display adequately. Luckily for me, I usually put in a cd, select play and select repeat disk (shift-1 on the remote) and I'm good to go for at least an hour or so. For me this is a very small inconvenience. Could Linn improve on the display; absolutely...The remote is laid out well and is easy to read. Coincidently, it will also control the volume on the Krell amp! The player does not have a headphone jack and the on/off is located on the left rear corner of the unit. In closing, I listen to a wide variety of music and the Linn Majic delivers on everything.

Clean, sleek lines to match seamlessly with a variety of decor; Build Quality; State-of-the-art measurements; Linn pedigree; Great sound

Display, ergonomics in general

Cosmetics: The Linn Majik has a sleek, clean, modern design that doesn't really draw attention to itself. It seems to be designed to blend seamlessly with modern decor. The looks don't have much "wow" factor like the Moon CD players.

Controls: I like the fact that the buttons on the unit are kept to a minimum (6), which enhances the clean look. But I'm not crazy about the buttons themselves. They're too small, and combined with the fact they are soft-touch, makes them seem rather effete. As to the remote, it is probably nice if you have several Linn components, but if you just own the CD, then there's lots of stuff crowded in there that you will never use.

Display: Art Dudley said, "I don't like it." Well, neither do I. It's a shame that this poorly-thought out display mars an otherwise nice-operating unit. One can toggle through 6 different display choices: Disc Type; Track # currently playing/Total # of tracks; Track time elapsed; Track time remaining; Disc time elapsed; and Disc time remaining. Dudley didn't like the fact that you can't view the track number and time elapsed simultaneously. The whole scheme is unnecessarily complicated. (Thankfully, though, if you are pushing the "next track" button, the display will automatically show a Track#/Total# display, then revert to the previously selected display. Same when the end of a track is reached.) But what Dudley didn't mention was how difficult it is to read the display from the listening position. Maybe his eyes are better than mine, but to me, it's just too darn dim, even set at 100%. In a darkened room, from 8 feet away, it is just barely legible, and in a lighted room it is almost worthless. To compare, my mbl 7008 integrated amp display has four brightness settings. The dimmest one is brighter than the Majik set to 100%! This is very frustrating. Another thing, why put the open drawer button to the left of the CD drawer, and the play button to the right? Wouldn't it make sense to put them on the same side?

Sound: I can only compare the sound to my previous player, a Rotel RCD-1072. (It wouldn't be fair to compare it to other CD players which I have heard through different speakers than my own.) I like what Art Dudley said, that the sound is "open and pure." There is a purity, a higher resolution, to the timbre. When listening to 'Reckoning,' Jerry Garcia's and Bob Weir's acoustic guitars sound more realistic than ever before...beautiful tone, and I feel like I can hear each plucked string, which reverberates and decays with a fantastic realism...I also think that the imaging and coherence is quite improved with the Linn. But instead of going on, I'll simply say that everything sounds "better." I understand what people mean when they say a "veil has been lifted." My speakers "seem" to have improved. But it's the CD player showing what my speakers are capable of.

However, the Linn costs five times what the Rotel does, and the Rotel is a player that I think most people could live happily with for many years.

I will also add that because I own so many Grateful Dead discs, I wanted a player that has HDCD. I also liked the fact that John Atkinson said that the Linn's measurements (other than a modest pre-empasis error) were state-of-the-art for a 16-bit device. And my understanding is that very few CD's were mastered with pre-emphasis, so this should not be bothersome.

Link to Art Dudley's review:
http://www.stereophile.com/cdplayers/307linn/index.html