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The Organik DAC circuit board inside a Linn Klimax DSM. Photo: Linn.

Linn technology

Two ideas run through every Linn system, and each has its own page. How a Linn system fits together shows how the source, the amplification and the loudspeakers connect. Exakt explains how Linn keeps the signal digital all the way into the loudspeaker. The individual technologies follow below.

Linn technology

The engineering behind Linn

Linn gives its technologies names because each one solves a specific problem. Here is what each does, where it came from, why it matters in a system, and what you may hear.

The founding ideaSince 1973

The Sondek LP12 and source first

A belt-driven turntable on a three-point sprung sub-chassis, built around a patented single-point bearing and designed from the start to be upgraded: the oldest hi-fi component still in production, and the proof of Linn's rule that information lost at the source is lost forever. Read the deep diveClose

What it does

An AC synchronous motor, or a DC motor on Radikal decks, drives the inner platter through a flat belt. The platter, its bearing and the tonearm ride on a sub-chassis hung from three springs, isolated from the plinth and the motor, so vibration from the loudspeakers and the room has no easy path to the stylus. The bearing is a hardened point running on a thrust pad inside a precision bush, machined at the Tiefenbrun family's Castle Precision Engineering and patented in 1975. Every LP12 since 1973 shares that geometry, and every part around it has been redesigned at least once: the bearing twice, the sub-chassis four times, the power supply, the motor, the tonearms and the plinth. Linn's commitment is that any LP12 ever made can be brought to the current specification.

Why it matters in a system

Ivor Tiefenbrun's argument, made by taking the deck into shops and letting people listen, was that the source and not the loudspeaker decides what a system can do, because nothing downstream can recover what the stylus failed to read. It reordered how the industry spent its money, and it is why Pearl sets up the turntable first and builds the system around it. Our own page on the deck, The Linn Sondek LP12, tells the story part by part.

What you may hear

Pitch, timing and a lack of feedback that let a record sound like the musicians rather than the machine. David Price in StereoNET: the LP12's special sauce was its patented single-point bearing, and over fifty years the only way it could go was toward neutrality, and so it has. Herb Reichert in Stereophile found the current Klimax LP12 plowed through opera, Mahler and Brit-pop with unrivaled ease.

The third bearing in fifty yearsSince 2020

The Karousel bearing

Linn's 2020 single-point bearing: a reinforced thrust-pad housing, a stiffer base and a substantial lock-nut that make the joint between bearing, platter and sub-chassis the most rigid Linn has built. It fits, and improves, every LP12 ever made. Read the deep diveClose

What it does

Karousel keeps the LP12's single-point principle, a hardened spindle point turning on a thrust pad, and rebuilds everything around it. The thrust pad sits in a reinforced housing with a smaller, stiffer base; the stainless-steel housing is fastened to the sub-chassis with a large lock-nut rather than the old three-screw flange, so the bearing and the sub-chassis become one structure; and the tolerances of the bush and spindle are tighter than the Cirkus bearing of 1993 that it replaced. It is standard on every new LP12 since 2020 and a dealer-fitted upgrade for any older deck; it is not compatible with the Valhalla supply, and early outer platters may need replacing.

Why it matters in a system

The bearing is the one part every LP12 shares and the point through which every vibration must pass: the stiffer the union of platter, spindle, bearing and sub-chassis, the less the stylus is asked to read that is not in the groove. Linn said Karousel would improve every Sondek LP12 ever made, and it is the first upgrade we recommend to an owner of an older deck.

What you may hear

A quieter background, firmer bass and a steadier sense of pitch. Hi-Fi News measured through-bearing rumble at minus 68.5 dB and wow and flutter of 0.02 and 0.04 percent on a Majik deck with the Karousel fitted; Linn describes a more refined motion and greater stability.

Speed, motor and silenceSince 2009

Radikal and the Linn power supplies

From Valhalla in 1982 to the Klimax Radikal of 2025, Linn has treated the LP12's motor supply as the floor beneath pitch and timing. Radikal replaces the AC motor with a precious-metal DC motor in an isolated housing, checks the platter's speed every revolution, and now runs from a dual-rail Utopik supply that also powers the Urika phono stage. Read the deep diveClose

What it does

The Majik supply is a tidy internal board driving the standard synchronous motor at 33⅓; the Lingo, Linn's first external supply in 1990 and since 2018 built on Radikal's speed management, generates its own clean sine wave for the AC motor and adds 45 rpm at a button. Radikal, from 2009, changes the motor itself: a brushed DC motor with a moving-coil rotor, chosen for its low noise, in an acoustically isolated housing, with a tachometer that reads the platter and a controller that corrects it on every rotation. Radikal/2 of 2021 moved the control to an FPGA with persistent auto-calibration, quieter motor components and a six-layer power board, and Linn claimed the lowest noise floor of any LP12; the Klimax Radikal of 2025 runs from a dual-rail Utopik supply, one isolated rail for the motor controller and one for the Urika inside the deck, in a chassis machined from three solid aluminum sections.

Why it matters in a system

A belt-drive turntable's pitch stability and background silence are set by its motor and the electricity that feeds it, and the Radikal's separate rail for the phono stage keeps the quietest signal in the system away from the noisiest. It is the largest single step on the LP12 ladder after the sub-chassis, and it is the step that takes a deck from Selekt toward Klimax.

What you may hear

Pitch that holds through sustained piano, a blacker background and a more composed, unhurried sense of time. Chris Kelly in The Ear called Radikal a robust and extremely well engineered power supply and the Klimax LP12 perhaps the most refined LP12 yet built.

The platform on the springsSince 2006

Keel SE, Kore and the sub-chassis

The sub-chassis is the suspended platform that carries the bearing, platter and tonearm. Linn's Majik sub-chassis is a sandwich of aluminum, Kore bonds an aluminum sub-chassis to a machined armboard, and Keel SE machines sub-chassis, armboard and arm collar from one billet, three hundred percent stiffer than the original Keel. Read the deep diveClose

What it does

Keel, introduced in 2006, was the first one-piece LP12 sub-chassis: the sub-chassis, the armboard and the tonearm collar cut from a single piece of aluminum, so the bearing and the arm are held in one rigid structure on the springs. Kore, the middle step, bonds an aluminum sub-chassis to a machined-from-solid armboard. Keel SE of 2025 was redesigned with finite-element analysis: a bracing structure machined into its underside raises its stiffness about threefold and pushes its resonances higher and weaker, mass is added between the Karousel mount and the arm collar so the geometry cannot rock, and metal is removed under the armboard to balance the center of mass on the springs. It weighs 2.2 kg, is black-anodized and laser-etched, and is fitted by a dealer.

Why it matters in a system

Everything that reads the record rides on the sub-chassis. Its stiffness decides how cleanly the suspension isolates and how fixed the relationship between stylus and groove stays while the platter turns; Linn's note is that even a slight rocking between sub-chassis and armboard distorts tracking. It is the first of the big three upgrades on the ladder, after the bearing, and Russ fits it on our bench.

What you may hear

Tighter, better-defined bass, a cleaner midband and a more stable image. StereoNET, on a Selekt LP12 with Kore: never boomy or bright, with a cleaner, more neutral midband; What Hi-Fi? on the Klimax deck with Keel: a sound of huge scale and power.

Krane, Arko, Ekos SE; Adikt to EkstatikSince 1988

Tonearms and cartridges

Linn has machined its own tonearms since the Ekos of 1988 and specifies a cartridge for each: Krane with Adikt or Koil, Arko with Kendo, Ekos SE with Ekstatik, each pair designed to drain resonance through the sub-chassis as one system. Read the deep diveClose

What it does

The Ekos SE, from 2006, carries a titanium arm tube on a stainless-steel bearing housing and remains Linn's reference arm. The Arko of 2022 is an all-new gimballed arm machined throughout from cold-drawn 7075 aluminum with far fewer parts between headshell and housing, Linn's first new in-house arm in sixteen years. The Krane of 2020, standard on the Majik LP12, is a static-balanced arm on a tungsten-and-sapphire vertical bearing with twin ceramic horizontal bearings, hand-assembled, with an effective mass of ten grams. The cartridges climb in step: the Adikt moving magnet and the Koil moving coil for the Krane; the Krystal; the Kendo, derived from the Ekstatik with a nickel-coated 7075 body and aluminum-bronze inserts and designed for the Arko; and the Ekstatik, a seven-gram honeycomb body with a micro-ridge stylus on a sapphire cantilever, stiffer than boron, developed with EMT and voiced on the Ekos SE.

Why it matters in a system

An arm and cartridge are a mechanical system with the sub-chassis beneath them, and Linn tunes each pair as one. It is why the three complete decks sound like three steps of the same thing rather than three different turntables, and why we fit other makers' cartridges to an LP12 only after checking arm mass and compliance on our bench.

What you may hear

The Krane and Adikt are warm and forgiving; the Arko and Kendo are quick, open and precise, what StereoNET called a highly emotional performer with a cleaner, more neutral midband; the Ekos SE and Ekstatik give the quiet, deep background and low-level detail of the Klimax deck. Chris Kelly: an arm that holds its own against the very best, and an extraordinarily good moving-coil cartridge.

The phono stage inside the deckSince 2009

Urika and Urika II

A moving-coil phono stage mounted on the LP12's Trampolin baseboard and powered by the Radikal, so the cartridge's signal is amplified inches from the arm. Urika II digitizes it there, finishes the RIAA curve in the digital domain and sends it to a Linn DSM over Exakt Link. Read the deep diveClose

What it does

Urika, from 2009, is a dual-mono moving-coil stage inside the plinth, fed by its own rail from the Radikal so the quietest signal in the system never travels down an interconnect. Urika II, announced for the LP12's forty-fifth anniversary in 2018, keeps the analog gain and the first RIAA pole, converts to digital, and performs the second pole and the rumble filter in software before sending the result over Exakt Link to a Linn DS or DSM; each unit is measured at the factory and set up by the dealer for the cartridge fitted. The Klimax DSM and Selekt DSM carry Exakt Link inputs for exactly this connection. The analog Urika I remains for owners with a conventional preamplifier.

Why it matters in a system

The shortest path from cartridge to gain, the quietest possible supply, and with Urika II a record that passes through Space Optimisation and Exakt like any other source, so the LP12 benefits from the room correction and the digital crossovers of a Linn system. It is the finishing piece of the Klimax LP12 and the reason a Linn vinyl front end can feed a Linn system with one cable.

What you may hear

Alan Sircom in hi-fi+ heard greater accuracy, more detail and an almost complete absence of noise, and judged that the detail, the timing and the atomic-clock precision win; a dealer shootout found the Klimax LP12 with Urika II the lowest noise floor of any vinyl setup it had tried.

The first plinth upgradeSince 2025

The Bedrok plinth

Linn's first performance upgrade to the LP12's plinth: beech veneers laid in alternating perpendicular layers and pressed under extreme heat and pressure into a material more than twice the density of a standard plinth, first seen on the LP12-50 of 2023 and released to every LP12 in 2025. Read the deep diveClose

What it does

The standard LP12 plinth is a solid hardwood frame, and for fifty years it was the one part Linn left alone. Bedrok replaces it with an engineered block: thin layers of beech, each laid at right angles to the last, compressed into a dense, uniformly solid material with what Linn calls negligible resonance and superior acoustic isolation, finished in natural beech with an oil that shows the layering on the corners. It was developed for the 250-unit Sondek LP12-50, refined with Jony Ive's studio LoveFrom for the fiftieth anniversary in 2023, and offered on its own from February 2025, in limited quantities because of the scarcity of the beech and the complexity of the process. It fits every LP12.

Why it matters in a system

The plinth carries every other part of the deck, so its resonance is in everything the stylus reads. Linn says Bedrok brings any LP12 close to Klimax-level performance, and it is the one upgrade that changes the deck's foundation rather than a part on it. We keep a Bedrok deck on the floor beside the wood-plinth decks so the difference can be heard directly.

What you may hear

More pace, tighter bass and greater insight, in Linn's words, and a sense of the whole deck having settled. StereoNET called it possibly the ultimate tweak.

The end of the discSince 2007

Linn DS: the network music player

The Klimax DS of 2007 was the first high-resolution network player: no disc, no drive and no moving parts, pulling studio-master files over Ethernet and converting them in a machined-from-solid chassis. Two years later Linn stopped making CD players altogether. Read the deep diveClose

What it does

Conceived in 2004 and developed under Gilad Tiefenbrun, the Klimax DS received 24-bit, 192 kHz files over the network rather than over S/PDIF, upsampled them in an FPGA and converted them with a chassis and power supply built to Klimax standards; it had no storage of its own and no mechanism of any kind. The Akurate, Majik and Sneaky DS followed in 2008, the DSM of 2011 added a preamplifier and HDMI, and the platform has since been remade in software and in plug-in hardware: Space Optimisation in 2015, Katalyst in 2016, Organik in 2021, and the Selekt DSM's slot-and-cartridge design in 2018. Linn's Kinsky app began the control software that is now the Linn app, with Konfig and the cloud-based Linn Account for setup.

Why it matters in a system

In November 2009 Linn announced it would build no more CD players, because the network player was already better and the future of music was files and streams. The DS earned the Queen's Award for Enterprise in Innovation in 2012, and because its DAC boards plug in, a 2007 Klimax DS can be fitted with the current Organik converter in twenty minutes. It is the foundation of every Linn streamer we sell, from the Majik DSM to the Klimax DSM.

What you may hear

Wes Phillips in Stereophile found the first Klimax DS better, playing high-resolution files, than any CD player he had heard, and that it conveyed a sense of realism better than almost any component he had auditioned.

The crossover moved into the loudspeaker, digitallySince 2013

Exakt

Exakt keeps the music digital from the DSM to an engine inside each loudspeaker or Exaktbox, where a linear-phase crossover divides it, each drive unit's measured deviation is corrected, and only then is each driver's signal converted and amplified. Read the deep diveClose

What it does

In a conventional loudspeaker a passive crossover sits after the amplifier, and its filters delay the low frequencies more than the high ones, so the parts of a note arrive out of step. Exakt performs the crossover before conversion, in software, with linear phase, delaying the highs so that fundamental and harmonics arrive together; it measures every drive unit before it is installed and corrects its individual departure from the ideal; and it then gives each driver its own DAC and amplifier. Exakt Link carries the signal over ordinary Cat 5 cable from the DSM to the loudspeaker, and the Selekt DSM carries a three-way Exakt engine of its own for supported passive speakers driven by its power-out cartridges. The 360 of 2023 added Power DAC, which merges conversion and amplification into one stage for the bass drivers, and in 2026 Linn's first in-house drive units, with the Pistonik motor, were fitted to it. Exaktbox brings Exakt to Linn's passive loudspeakers and to selected designs from other houses.

Why it matters in a system

Linn's Aktiv systems of 1974 put the crossover before the amplifier in the analog domain; Exakt does it digitally and removes the timing error between drivers rather than reducing it, and it makes a loudspeaker upgradeable in software. It is Linn's complete system: a Klimax DSM, a pair of 360s and nothing between them but a network cable.

What you may hear

Spaciousness and timing. Alan Sircom in hi-fi+ found the 360 had excellent imaging, and excellent imaging for more than one listener, and called it an honest, neutral, dynamic and detailed loudspeaker; The Absolute Sound found it did bass into the 30 Hz region effortlessly.

Hear the music, not the roomSince 2015

Space Optimisation

Room correction without a microphone: Linn builds an acoustic model from the measured behavior of your particular loudspeakers, where they stand, and the room's dimensions, construction and features, then removes only the energy the room adds. It is included with every Linn player and set up by a Linn specialist. Read the deep diveClose

What it does

Space Optimisation starts from Linn's own measurements of hundreds of loudspeakers, including the positions of their drive units and the response of their ports, and from a description of the room: its dimensions, the construction of its walls, floor and ceiling, the doors and windows, and where the speakers and the listener are. From that it models the reflections that pile up energy at particular frequencies and the boundary effects of placement, and it reduces exactly those frequencies, leaving everything else as recorded. Space Optimisation+ on Exakt systems adds the measured response of every individual drive unit. The dealer first finds the speakers' best position by listening, then enters the practical position; the settings live in the owner's Linn Account and can be revisited as the room changes.

Why it matters in a system

Few rooms allow loudspeakers to stand where they sound best. Space Optimisation recreates the sound of the ideal position from the practical one, and it works with any loudspeaker a Linn DSM drives, so it is part of every Linn system we install. Connor and Russ set it up in your room when the system is delivered.

What you may hear

Cleaner, better-defined bass and a clearer midrange with the room's boom removed. John Darko called a treated room a pipe dream for most buyers and found the software gave better control over the lower frequencies; hi-fi+ wrote that Linn owners could now place their speakers wherever they chose and still enjoy great performance.

The fourth-generation DACSince 2016

Katalyst

Linn's 2016 converter architecture: still built on a trusted converter chip, but with Linn controlling the five things that decide what comes out of it, the data optimization, the master clock, the reference voltage, the power supplies and the output driver. Read the deep diveClose

What it does

A converter chip is only as good as what feeds it. Katalyst surrounds the chip with Linn's own design in five places: a refined data-optimization stage before it, a highly accurate master clock, a high-stability reference voltage, the first time Linn took control of the reference, independent power-supply wells for each section, and a low-distortion output driver after it. Linn's description is that without that control, errors in any of the critical inputs produce a flawed analog signal with audible distortion, and that Katalyst is the highest performance attainable with third-party silicon. It launched in the Klimax DS and DSM in September 2016, as plug-in upgrade boards for existing units, and came to the Akurate range and the new Selekt DSM in 2018.

Why it matters in a system

Katalyst is the middle of the Selekt DSM's three DAC levels and the most popular at Pearl, the step most listeners hear at once, and its ideas trickle down into the Majik DSM. In the Selekt it is a module that can be fitted later, in minutes.

What you may hear

A quieter background, more texture in voices and strings and a more natural flow. Linn called it the biggest performance upgrade it had ever released for the Klimax DS and DSM.

The first all-Linn converterSince 2021

Organik

Linn's first wholly in-house DAC: an FPGA running Linn's own upsampling, volume and pulse-width-modulated delta-sigma modulation, feeding a discrete analog FIR conversion stage. No converter chip anywhere. Introduced in the Klimax DSM of 2021, retrofittable to every Klimax DS since 2007, and the top level of the Selekt DSM. Read the deep diveClose

What it does

Organik replaces the chip with Linn's own design in two parts. An FPGA takes the incoming data, upsamples it and performs the volume control and a PWM delta-sigma modulation; a discrete conversion stage, an analog finite-impulse-response filter built from sixteen switches per channel, each with its own local supply, turns that stream into music. An eight-layer board distributes power and clocks, the clock traces are matched to within fractions of a millimeter so every part of the converter receives its clock at the same instant, and the conversion stage has its own regulator and power planes. It handles up to 24-bit, 384 kHz and DSD256. In the Selekt DSM it comes as a stereo module or as a pair of mono modules on mono line-out cartridges, which Linn describes as the highest performance the Selekt can reach.

Why it matters in a system

Owning every stage of conversion lets Linn remake the converter in its own image rather than around a supplier's part, and because the board plugs in, a dealer can fit it to a 2007 Klimax DS in about twenty minutes. In the Selekt it is the third DAC level, and Linn says an Edition Hub with stereo Organik surpasses the previous-generation Klimax DSM with Katalyst.

What you may hear

Robert Harley in The Absolute Sound placed the Organik Klimax DSM among the few best-sounding DACs he had heard regardless of price, with no trade-offs; David Price in StereoNET wrote that it lifts an electronic veil from the recording and is head and shoulders over Katalyst; Jason Kennedy in The Ear found it treads the line between refinement and energy with rare precision.

Thirty years of in-house switch-mode suppliesSince 1993

Utopik and Linn's power supplies

Linn has designed its own audio-optimized switch-mode power supplies since Brilliant in 1993. Utopik, the current generation, uses valley switching, power-factor correction and precision-regulated isolated rails, and in the Klimax Solo amplifiers a soft-switching resonant stage that delivers two kilowatts. Read the deep diveClose

What it does

Brilliant of 1993 was Linn's first in-house switching supply; Dynamik of 2009 added dedicated internal mains filtering, lower radio-frequency emission, faster control loops and spread-spectrum switching, and powered a decade of Klimax and Akurate products. Utopik, which appeared in the Selekt DSM Edition Hub in 2022, compares output to input through several feedback loops at every stage, uses intelligent valley switching and power-factor correction, and delivers precision-regulated, isolated rails that hold steady as the mains wanders. In the Klimax Solo 500 and 800 a resonant tank circuit lets the voltage across the switch fall to zero before it is thrown, soft switching, at up to two kilowatts; in the Klimax Radikal a dual-rail Utopik feeds the motor controller and the Urika phono stage separately. It is standard in the Klimax DSM, Selekt DSM, Klimax Exaktbox and Solo amplifiers, and a retrofit for many earlier products.

Why it matters in a system

Every DAC, motor controller and amplifier stands on its power rails, and Linn's position is that filtering done inside the product beats a conditioner outside it. Utopik is one reason a current Selekt or Klimax outperforms the same product from a few years earlier, and it is a retrofit we can fit to older Selekt DSMs.

What you may hear

A lower noise floor and more composure under load. Chris Frankland in StereoNET heard from the Klimax Solo 800 an amazingly uncolored, hear-through sound with sledgehammer bass and seemingly endless reserves of power.

Crossover distortion removed, for lifeSince 2023

Adaptive Bias Control

A Class AB output stage in which the current through every output transistor is measured, digitized and held at its ideal bias by an FPGA control loop in real time, so crossover distortion is eliminated at any temperature, level or age while the music itself stays analog. Read the deep diveClose

What it does

Crossover distortion is the characteristic flaw of Class AB: where one half of the output stage hands over to the other, a fixed bias current is never quite right, and it drifts as the amplifier warms and ages. Adaptive Bias Control, introduced in the 360 loudspeaker's amplifiers in 2023 and then in the Klimax Solo 800 of 2024 and Solo 500 of 2025, measures the current through each output transistor, sixteen of them in the Solo 800, and a digital loop sets and continuously adjusts each one's bias. The Solo 800 delivers 400 watts into 8 ohms, 800 into 4 and 1.2 kilowatts into 2 from a fanless chassis, with distortion of 0.0004 percent at full power, an output impedance of a hundredth of an ohm, a two-kilowatt Utopik supply and Class V rail control that lowers dissipation at ordinary levels; the Solo 500 brings the same control to eight transistors at 250 and 500 watts.

Why it matters in a system

The bias is right every second of the amplifier's life rather than on the day it left the factory, and the signal path stays entirely analog. The Solo 800 is Linn's first passively cooled high-power amplifier and its answer to the established monoblocks of the high end; with a Klimax DSM and 360 PWAB or another house's loudspeakers it is the top of the Linn ladder at Pearl.

What you may hear

Chris Frankland in StereoNET found the Solo 800 gets everything right, with an uncolored, hear-through sound, and judged that in any great high-end system it cannot fail to impress; Alan Sircom likened the control loop to an engine-management system for loudspeakers.

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