Hi SOS,
I was in a similar situation, I had no intention to buy but simply accompanied my friends to audition the XL DC. Turned out the dealer had the Safir mounted, and by the end of the day he sold 4 Safir and a XL DC!
Regarding the Safir, not necessarily a negative comment, but an observation that I would be interested to know if other users share similar findings. I replaced my 4Point14 with the Safir on a JC Verdier pairing with a Dynavector XV 1S. To my ears, the Safir outperformed the 4Point14 considerably in every area but one, which is the soundstage width. While the Safir’s imaging at the outer edges are better defined (same for the imaging anywhere else in the soundstage) than the 4Point14, the soundstage width just seem to be so slightly narrower. In this area, I found my Rockport airbearing linear tracking arm again offered a very slightly wider soundstage than the 4Point14, but the imaging also not as defined as the Safir. I can’t help but wonder whether this slight soundstage width difference is caused by the tracking errors of a 9” arm vs 14” and linear tracker!
I would be very interested to know if other Safir users, especially those who have used the 4Point14, Airline or other linear tracking arms share similar findings!