Linn Series 3 review

• Could conceivably be louder
• High price

For an organization that is constantly appeared to be capable at seeing the looming disaster, Scottish sound authority Linn has taken as much time as is needed to convey its introduction remote speaker. All things considered, Linn has been at the bleeding edge of computerized sound spilling for well over twelve years.

Before 2009 was over it had ceased its (all around respected) scope of CD players – recollect those things? – so as to focus its endeavors where it realized the genuine computerized sound activity would be; it wasn’t long after this the organization began utilizing its Exakt advanced sound preparing motor to change its amplifiers into advanced sound frameworks.

‘Ground breaking’ and ‘fearless’ aren’t equivalent to ‘wild’, however. Linn has held off from joining the top of the line remote speaker fracas until its Exakt innovation can be coordinated into an item that fits that generally impalpable of showcasing prerequisites – indeed, we’re talking ‘way of life’ – just as sounding sufficient to legitimize wearing a Linn identification.

Thus, at last, there’s the Linn Series 3. It’s positively among the most costly remote speakers around, yet Linn figures, with its typical explicitness, that it is “the best-sounding remote speaker on the planet”. Furthermore, guess what? We’re thinking that its difficult to oppose this idea…

Plan

• Measurements: 30 x 25 x 21cm
• Laser-cut grille

There’s positively no befuddling the Series 3’s structure jargon for that of some other remote speaker. At 30cm high it’s a decisive size, and the naturally molded bureau is suggestive of… what? A wine-glass, as Linn itself recommends? Um, a bulb of fennel, possibly?

Regardless of what it helps you to remember, there’s no denying Series 3 is a striking looker. Also, it’s nearly as material a joy as it is visual – the cupboard is projected from a mineral compound all the more ordinarily sent in top of the line kitchen pottery, and is then hand-completed until it’s faultlessly smooth. Like stone, it’s cool to the touch and, similar to stone, it’s firm and thick and dormant enough to make an ideal acoustic material.

Part of its visual appeal originates from its gentle anomaly of shape. Width of 25cm and profundity of 21cm assistance its extents, and the front of the bureau is smoothed off a little to permit the slender, hardened and awkwardly intelligent grille to sit level. The head of the cupboard isn’t level, either – it inclines forward delicately, all the better to show its perfectly coordinated glass top-plate.

Highlights

• 200 watts of intensity: 100W 19mm tweeter; 100W 160mm driver)
• Roon Ready, AirPlay 2, Bluetooth 4.2, TuneIn web radio
• Exakt computerized motor
• 24bit/192kHz

Numerous remote speakers can be conveyed as a sound system pair just by purchasing two of them. That is not exactly how it functions with Series 3.

£2950 gets you a ‘301’ speaker, which is completely stacked with usefulness. Within it’s pressing a few Class D power enhancers of 100 watts each – that is one to drive the 19mm silk vault tweeter and another to control the 160mm doped paper mid/bass driver underneath it.

Towards the base of the back of the bureau are the speaker’s physical information sources. There’s mains intensity (obviously), an Ethernet attachment (for extreme remote security), a HDMI ARC attachment (on the off chance that you need to give your video sources the Series 3 therapy) and an Exakt Link. This last looks a great deal like an Ethernet attachment, and is utilized for association in a sound system pair.

Yet, normally, the Linn is generally about its remote ability. The Series 3 is Roon Ready, so any organized sound (up to a stout 24bit/192kHz norm) is open; Apple AirPlay 2 and Bluetooth 4.2 are accessible for direct streaming. Real time features – including Spotify, Tidal and Qobuz – are coordinated into the Linn/Kazoo control application, as is TuneIn web radio (in spite of the fact that Linn’s continuous abhorrence towards MQA implies Tidal Masters records are accessible just as 16bit/44.1kHz copied).

Regardless of how you get your advanced sound data on board your 301 Series 3 speaker, however, when it’s there it is pored over by the Exact computerized motor. Essentially, Linn is looking to keep this mind boggling data in the advanced area for as far as might be feasible. So any sub-192kHz stuff is upsampled to this goal, as it’s at this standard the Exakt motor plays out its computerized hybrid separating. The document is then upsampled once more, to a powerful 768kHz, so as to sidestep all computerized to-simple stages. At exactly that point is it taken care of to the force amps, having been held as computerized data until nanoseconds in advance.

This is the way Linn’s Exakt motor works in the organization’s other advanced sound frameworks, a lot of which cost bounty more than the Series 3. It’s a careful, muddled and costly cycle, and it’s one wherein Linn has total confidence.

To get similar outcomes from a genuine sound system Series 3 arrangement, you’ll need a ‘302’ speaker to oblige your 301. As far as driver determination and on-board enhancement, the 302 is indistinguishable from the 301 – however it is basically slaved to the 301. The 302 has only a mains power attachment and an Exakt Link contribution, from which it interfaces with 301 so as to get all its sound data. That is the reason a Series 3 ‘framework’ is somewhat less than twofold the cost of an independent 301.

Interface

• Linn/Kazoo control application (iOS and Android)
• Voice control by means of Amazon or Google
• Physical touch controls

The Series 3 is definitely not a shrewd speaker – as in voice collaborators aren’t straightforwardly inherent – yet it’s conceivable to control its expansive usefulness if it’s on a similar system as an Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant mic-prepared speaker. Incorporating the Linn into the Alexa or Google Home application happens through Bluetooth, and exceptionally clear it is as well.

There’s additionally the Linn/Kazoo application, which offers admittance to every single capacity the Series 3 can perform, and is very legitimate and reasonably orchestrated. It’s additionally about as steady as these things ever get when they weren’t created by an organization with a) no time weights and b) boundless assets. Here’s the place you arrangement your broad Series 3 multi-room framework (on the off chance that you, as well, have boundless assets).

Arrangement 3 has a physical interface as well – and it’s so agreeably material that you might be enticed to make it your fundamental wellspring of collaboration. On head of the 301 is, as examined, a glass plate – this has various touch-delicate controls for use when matching, for putting away presets and top picks, and for controlling volume. There are 100 thin LEDs shaping a delicately sparkling circle in the glass plate, and they show volume level. (Obviously, the 302 has no need of any of this – thus simply has a charmingly sparkling ‘Linn’ logo radiating from its glass top-plate.)

Sound quality

• Splendid time-arrangement
• Eloquent, sorted out sound
• Unprecedented detail recovery

As referenced before, Linn believes Series 3 to be “the best-sounding remote speaker on the planet”. And keeping in mind that it’s conceivable to make a solid contention against that on a pound-for-pound premise, in total terms the organization likely could be correct.

Everything the Series 3 does, as far as sound generation, it does with complete ability and certainty. It’s undeniable from the initial scarcely any bars of a 24bit/192kHz document of Beck’s Nobody’s Fault But My Own that the Linn has total authority over the material – and serves it up in the most influential way.

A major piece of what the Exakt motor (and, by expansion, most of Linn’s computerized items) guarantees is that the time arrangement of the music is as persuading as could be expected under the circumstances. Music, absolutely undoubtedly, sounds its generally common and trustworthy when all the recurrence data arrives at the audience simultaneously, paying little heed to where in the recurrence run it is (and along these lines how long or short a wave it is). So the moderately scarcely any components to the Beck recording sound unarguably like an exhibition – there’s a feeling of solidarity and communication between the various components of the melody that make it sound like a solitary piece.

On a basic level it sounds clear as well as direct. However, you don’t have to tune in to numerous remote speakers (at any cost) to acknowledge sewing singular strands of a chronicle, with their various surfaces and recurrence data, into a rational entire is a long way from simple.

The Series 3 makes it sound like a drop in the bucket, as you may have guessed. It’s an immediate and intractable entertainer – a less data rich 16bit/44.1Khz CD-standard record of Solange’s Losing You is in any case sumptuously point by point and powerful. Low-end hits hard and profound, yet with straight-edged control to the assault and rot of individual notes; at the furthest edge of the recurrence extend, high pitch sounds are sparkling and fresh, however never recommend they’ll overflow into hardness or fragility – regardless of whether you’re tuning in at huge volume levels. Also, in the middle of all that, the vocal is so stuffed with data that the nuances of the artist’s strategy are revealed totally.

Also, not at all like a ton of items from hesitantly ‘hello there fi’ brands, the Series 3 isn’t reluctant to ghetto it. Regardless of on the off chance that you play the slapdash 30 Seconds Over Tokyo by Pere Ubu or the disorderly Theme de Yo-Yo by Art Ensemble of Chicago, the Linn arranges the data into a persuasive entire, doesn’t ration the subtleties, and has such a powerful strength to convey the delicate/boisterous assaults of either recording dynamically.

The Series 3 sound has force, exactness and articulacy – at the same time, the majority of all, it is agreeable and connecting with to tune in to. Because the Linn recovers all the fine subtleties, all the scarcely there drifters, all the low-level consonant subtleties, that doesn’t mean it’s systematic or impartial. No, it’s an exciting and intermittently stunning tune in.

Decision

In the event that your essential concern is getting real, exacting high-loyalty sound from a remote speaker – and you have the not irrelevant fortitude – at that point you totally need to try out this Linn.

There are many different remote speakers that convey more noteworthy out and out volume, however, so in the event that that is one of your prime contemplations, at that point maybe the Series 3 won’t cut it.

To the extent music-production goes, nonetheless, there’s actually nothing the Linn Series 3 can’t do. It can sound as powerful and vivacious, or as sensitive and dextrous, as your music requests; it can hit hard, it can mitigate, it can excite.