Linn Press Event Sept 23 2014, The Hospital Club, London WC2 Demonstrating the benefits of the Exakt system, a low loss path bringing the final digital to analogue conversion to individual amplifiers feeding the loudspeaker drive units, LINN showed their latest digital speaker the Akudorik, where to our surprise it was literally unveiled as a stand mount but where the substantial Exakt electronics was integrated in the elegant alloy stand. |
They had flagged that other manufacturer’s designs could be addressed and the big reveal was the unveiling of a pair of the B&W flagship Nautilus, a reference four-way active speaker released over 20 years ago. Linn had mapped the B&W active crossovers and provided an ambitious A/B demonstration of the B&W system with Linn digital crossovers, and including the Linn room correction feature.
This did not go entirely to plan due to an unforeseen difficultly. When the room equalisation was optimised earlier in the day the room was empty and quite reverberant. But now it was well filled with acoustically absorptive Press beings, and the equalisation was now judged to be too dry in the bass and lower mid. Certainly the Nautilus did sound better resolved, with more ambience in the recording when driven ‘digitally’ via the Akurate Exakt Box.
LINN see the development as providing the upgrade path of choice for the whole audio chain to, and ‘inside’ your speakers without having to change the speakers.