Linn 150 Loudspeakers

The 150 was designed alongside the 119 as the passive arm of Linn's current speaker range, carrying ideas from the 360 down to a fraction of its cost. It uses a 0.77-inch soft Sonomex dome tweeter with a ferrite magnet and ferrofluid-cooled voice coil, a 6.3-inch midrange and a 7.5-inch bass driver, both with Nextel-coated paper diaphragms on large ferrite motors built for high linear excursion. As on the 360, the drivers are mounted flush at the very front of the baffle with no grille, so nothing stands between the diaphragm and the room, and the passive crossover is kept to a lower order to preserve timing and dynamics. Two ports fire downward into the floor rather than at the wall behind, which makes placement less sensitive. The magnet-mounted trim, with concentric grooves like a record and an electro-formed Linn logo that guards the tweeter, comes from the flagship. The cabinet holds 40 liters and is offered in Walnut, Oak, Satin Black and Satin White.

Linn's brief was a speaker that is fun as well as refined: energetic, neutral, and as happy with a rough recording as a pristine one. It is rated at 86 dB sensitivity into a nominal 4 Ω load with bass extending to 38 Hz (±3 dB), so it wants an amplifier with current behind it rather than a modest receiver. We have not found a published review from a major outlet to cite, so the most useful listening we can offer is our own: ask us to set up the 150 beside the 119 and the 360 in our showroom.

The natural partner is a Selekt DSM with built-in amplification, which drives the 150 directly, adds Space Optimisation room correction, and can be configured with an Exakt module so the 150 runs fully active: three pairs of terminals give Exakt (or any multi-amp setup) separate access to the tweeter, midrange and bass. A Selekt DSM: Classic Hub or Edition Hub with an Exaktbox-I does the same job in a system with separate electronics. With a non-Linn amplifier the 150 works as an ordinary passive speaker. It suits small to medium rooms, and its 9.2-inch width lets it sit in a living room without dominating it. Linn's optional 150 Upgrade Stand, an aluminum base, is available to order.

The 150 is the larger of Linn's two passive speakers, above the 119 bookshelf, which shares its tweeter and driver family but gives up the dedicated midrange, the floorstanding cabinet and the bottom octave. Above it, the 343 and 360 move to Linn's Pistonik drivers, carbon-dome tweeter and midrange, and built-in Exakt electronics, and the price rises accordingly. The 150 is where a Linn system starts to use the full Exakt architecture at a sensible cost.