Linn meets Linn = the Quality is Outstanding

No amplifier, no passive crossover, no speaker cable in the conventional sense - this build strips a flagship system down to just two boxes, a Linn Klimax DSM System Hub and a pair of Linn 360 Exakt Integrated loudspeakers, because everything else the signal chain would normally need, DAC conversion, crossover and amplification, already lives inside the speaker cabinets themselves.

The system at a glance

Two components, a combined price around $140,000 with the 360 Exakt pair alone at $105,000, and an all-Linn architecture from source to driver. This is a system for a buyer who wants Linn's specific engineering philosophy taken to its logical conclusion - a source component that does nothing but stream and control volume, feeding loudspeakers that handle every other stage of signal processing internally.

Why these components work together

The Klimax DSM carries no conventional RCA or XLR analogue outputs at all; instead it sends volume-controlled digital audio directly to the 360 loudspeakers over Linn's proprietary Exakt Link, meaning the signal stays entirely in the digital domain until it reaches each individual driver. Inside the 360 Exakt, that signal is split by an Exakt digital crossover into the frequency bands for its four drive units, a 19mm beryllium-dome tweeter, a 64mm woven-carbon-fibre midrange dome, a 190mm aluminium-magnesium cone and two 220mm long-throw aluminium bass drivers, with the timing, phase and level of every band corrected before dedicated Organik DAC and amplifier stages feed each driver individually. The bass system alone runs two 500-watt Power DAC amplifiers, a technology that merges digital-to-analogue conversion and amplification into a single stage specifically to reduce distortion at high playback levels by more than 10dB compared with conventional designs, while the midrange and tweeter run on separate 150-watt Adaptive Bias Control amplifiers that continuously adjust their bias point in real time. Because every driver has its own dedicated conversion and amplification stage tuned to that driver's characteristics, the kind of frequency-dependent phase error that a conventional passive crossover introduces, where high frequencies from the tweeter arrive at the ear before bass frequencies from the woofer, is corrected before the signal ever reaches the voice coil, rather than being an unavoidable consequence of splitting one amplified signal across a passive network.

How it sounds

Linn's own engineering claim, and the review consensus around the system, centres on time alignment - with phase and timing errors corrected at the digital-crossover stage rather than left to a passive network downstream, the 360 Exakt is widely described as delivering exceptionally direct, positive and articulate sound, with deep, full-bodied bass thanks to the higher-excursion Power DAC-driven woofers, and a soundstage that a properly configured Exakt system can render with unusually precise instrument placement compared with more conventional passive-crossover flagship loudspeakers at a similar price.