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he gleaming white livery of the Fed-X truck splintered
the morning calm with a fusillade of gravel against the
stone griffins sternly guarding the massive oak front
door. Upon the FedEx man’s announcement: “Two items,” the
door opened to reveal a man who might well be a stone Grif-
fin himself, his face bearing a stern and raptor-like stare.
“What do they weigh?”
Looking down at his clipboard, the Fed-X man replied:
“800 pounds.”
“But that’s a third of a ton!”
The next morning saw the arrival of the Bull, who swiftly
moved the boxes to the music room.
Then on the third day came the Alchemist from Linn Prod-
ucts to spread layers of thick black cables, cardboard boxes,
black metal boxes, and wooden speaker boxes. This formed
an ultimate hi-fi horizon layer two feet deep over the entire 25’
by 18’ floor, but the tide had again receded by sunset that
evening. The first level of alchemy left the room pristine and
newly decorated with a four-foot tall rack of black metal
boxes and a perimeter of cherry veneered cabinets. The Linn
AV speakers were arranged variously on black metal stands
(the four principal channels served by the AKTIV Tukan), on
a television monitor (the Aktiv AV5120 center channel), and
on the floor (the AV5150 sub).
The cabinets of the Tukan speakers are a foot tall, a little
more than half as wide and deep. They sit upon open black
metal stands that raise the top of the loudspeakers to a height
of three feet. At the front of the room, a television monitor is
centrally placed between the two loudspeakers on stands, and
it is surmounted by the Aktiv AV5120 cen-
ter loudspeaker (2 feet wide, 7 inches
high, 9.5 inches deep). The AV5150 subwoofer (26 inches high,
18.5 inches wide and deep), sits between the television and
one of the Tukans. A Quadraspire rack contains the five
AV5105 power amplifiers, the AV5103 system controller, and
on the top two shelves, the Linn Karik CD player and Numerik
digital-to-analog converter. The shelves are finished in cherry
veneer to match the loudspeaker cabinets.
The price of systems based around the 5103 controller
starts at $18,815; the system I am testing costs $27,170. This
reflects the 11 channels of amplification provided to separately
power each driver or pair of drivers, in the case of the center
speaker and subwoofer. With the addition of better Linn com-
ponents, it is possible to drive the system cost to $145,680.
The fourth day was set aside for musical refinement. The
Alchemist was pushing buttons on a remote control, watching
as messages appeared on the control unit and simultaneously
on the monitor. He listened to the hiss (pink noise) emitted by
each loudspeaker in turn, measuring the distance between
each loudspeaker and the listening position, adjusting the loud-
speaker stands, moving them a half inch at a time. At one point,
he added a cellular telephone to his juggling, speaking rapidly
into the mouthpiece as he set white words to flash across the
screens and listened to the loudspeakers hiss as he moved
them to and fro.
In the middle of the fourth day, music appeared whole and
viscerally present, as first the Alchemist then I sat on a chair
placed at the focus of the equipment. The cherry cabinets with
their eyes one above the other gazed upon us as frantic mes-
sages in computeiform script scrolled over the blank displays.
A new cycle began. After much
searching and deep consideration, a disc
LINN-AV5103 AKTIV Multi-Channel System
In Search of the Mythical Beast: I
B A R R Y R A W L I N S O N