 The devices that compose the Majik system are at the moment the cheapest from the Scottish company’s LINN portfolio. All are new products, but the integrated amplifier Majil I – is even newer. Because first a system composed of a CD player, preamplifier and power amplifier was introduced and the integrated amp was presented later. Testing of the simplest and thus cheapest version of the Majik was very interesting for me, because about a month ago I tested the most tuned-up version of the Majik, with the CD player, the preamplifier and a six-channel power amplifier, active cross-over and the tri-amped Ninka loudspeakers (test in “Audio”). I must confess that this was a big experience for me, because I heard for the first time, what is the idea of Ivor Tiefenbrun, the founder, owner and animator of Linn. The elements of the Scottish system (except for the top products), listened to separately, between elements from other brands, without matching them, sound often a bit flat and aggressive. Those are of course borderline situations, but in general, that is the direction. And I heard that Linn is far from being thin, bright and lacking saturation. But it reaches this goal from a different direction than usually practiced. I wrote about two approaches to a product during the test of the loudspeakers Nexton M-100, but it will not hurt to repeat this. )
First of all, except for the top products, everything is ruled by the economics – preparing a certain device we have to have a set budget we aim at and the project is made based on this. This makes it much more difficult, but that’s just how the life is. When we know how much this device is going to cost we have to decide what kind of sound we are looking for. The simplest answer is: “neutral”. Like with many simple answers also this one is a utopia, because a natural sound, meaning sound like on a live event cannot be reached with any money. And if this is true, then we have to make some concrete assumptions. In every price range we can distinguish some products that can be described as very good. And we can count warm and a bit more accurate ones to those – the client will decide what he likes. But it cannot be said with full responsibility, or at least I will not be able to do so, that if all basic requirements are met, one device is better that the other. Different –yes, better – I don’t know… We can approach accurateness from the “cozy” side, where we have a warm, incredibly fluent and smooth sound, or from the “true” side, where there is no such saturation, but much better resolution and the details are much above average. Linn seems to be part of the second group. I think, that those devices are closer to the live music, but are more difficult to implement. However in good company we get very good resolution, what can be always heard, precision – also that – but also a kind of warmth and saturation, that usually comes from slightly colored devices. And the complete Linn system sounded just like that – nicely combining the two worlds. As it can be seen, the tested system is not fully complete – the loudspeakers are lacking. But our idea of the current issue was, that we test sets composed of a CD player and an amplifier, so there was no other choice. Bu I want to emphasize, that you should listen to a set recommended by the manufacturer, it really works… SOUND )
Listening to the Linn I could not get rid of the impression of a similar idea for the sound, some kind of a common line that can be drawn between it and the Meridian G series (test CD G-06 HERE) I tested some time ago. And probably, although the description is more fitting for the CD player, it is also quite true for the amplifier. I don’t know if this is an outcome of the usage of similar technologies – DVD-ROM drive, surface mount components and impulse power supplies, or just the commonwealth of musical experience – but it seems that Ivor Tiefenbrun (Linn) and Bob Stuart (Meridian) play in the same team. And in the same league. The basis of the sound of the Majik is the time coherence and phase accuracy. Things that are related, but not same. Linn’s time coherence means that it keeps pace, showing some dependencies in the playing technique, details, etc, that are usually not audible, or are audible worse than here. This is of course the basis of rhythmical, joyful sound, usually attributed to Naim. And – at least based on my experience – the latter brand products are designed that way. With the Linn it could be heard, that also the “flow” of the pieces was important. Maybe not most important, but quite high on the priority list. It is aided by quite “rigid” and sometimes even hard mid-bass. It did not dominate the transmission, but gave some kind of “boundaries”, within whose everything was ordered. But I mentioned the details, that are very clear due to the time clarity. I heard them with many discs, but I was most impressed with two of them - Café Blue Patricia Barber (Premonition Records/First Impression Music, FIM CD010, gold-HDCD) and Old Friends – New Roads Allan Taylor, in both cases with the guitar. In the piece Taste of Honey from the first one we have a guitar intro. After a few accords, at a certain moment, the guitar “vanishes” for a moment, as if it would be muffled or placed away from the microphone. This is just a moment, but making us believe we are hearing a live event, without editing in a studio. The worse the system, the more this is heard as an error, like if there would be something wrong with the master tape. The better the system, the better we hear that this is live sound, nothing disappears, there is just a falling down of the sound and unfolding of it again. Just live music. The Linn showed this element perfectly. We got a musical, unified whole, with a clear separation between music and technique. And I had a similar impression listening to the Taylor disc. There, in the recording The Meadow it is also about playing on an acoustic guitar and technique. There is no “disappearing-reappearing” act here, but clear being with the instrument. One can almost “see” how the musician sitting on a chair leans back and moves his fingers, etc. This is of course an illusion, a kind of “re”-creation because we still deal with a mechanical playback, but it is especially suggestive. As you can easily see from the description, Linn is a very accurate system. And this is true, the details are given in a very natural way, there is a lot of them and they are not hidden behind the timbre. Such way of sounding is also related to phase. It seems, that all frequency ranges come from the Majik at the same time, that there is a kind of coherence in a way the hologram is projected, that we perceive as the sound stage and virtual sources. The reproduction of the stage is brilliant here. This is a thing that is really at a very high level. There is depth, ant there is width, and the latter is better than in most products of the 20000zl price range. And you don’t even have to use very sophisticated, reference masterings, to appreciate this aspect of the sound. By coincidence, when Majik was the basis of the listening system, I was preparing wit him a presentation for a music lesson. The gymnasium my son is attending, has a very good music teacher, and the topic is handled in a very thought trough way. This is a school subject that is not easily defined. Most of the time, if the teacher is actually coming from teaching another subject, it understood as “singing”. This is true, singing and songs are a part of music as a whole. But this subject treated as that makes, that if somebody has a voice, than after some years can sing something, and the others can not. In my son’s school the teacher teaches them the timbre of instruments, the buildup of musical pieces, the pupils have to make presentations related to the music they like, etc. I think he’s lucky… Anyway, this time it was about preparing some samples related with electric instruments – both electro-mechanic ones as well as electronic. Oh well – there is much to chose from with my collection. We found more than a dozen different samples including vocoders, etc. The last piece we’ve recorded was Glory Box from the disc Dummy Portishead (Go! Beat, 828 553-2, CD) – it was there to show that a computer, or better said sampling, is also a kind of music and a kind of “electronic” instrument. I have to confess, that I haven’t listened to the disc for a long time. When I put it in my system I could not believe that it sounds so well! It is often so, that after some upgrades long not heard recordings sound completely different. This time the piece sounded in an incredibly warm and coherent way. Also the character of the sampled vinyl record tics was evident from the very beginning. The same piece played on the Linn sounded comparably coherent, without any problems with brightening. But I wanted to tell about something else – in this piece the vocal, differently than in other pieces on the disc, slightly moved to the right. The disc is recorded almost mono and only the depth and timbre count here, but this time this small deviation was heard, as if the sound technician made an error (and this was probably the case). This is audible rarely, because most of the time the vocal is reproduced very strong and flows a bit around. The Scottish system gave everything it could and there was no doubt where the voice is located in the context of other instruments. Actually it was the same with all other discs, for example on the brilliant disc La Trompette Retrouvée (Linn Records, CKD 294, SACD/HDCD), where positions of the trumpet and the piano were clear, despite the characteristic, quite big and not fully localizable reverb of the latter. )
To exploit everything I wrote about and not lead to other problems you have to plan all other peripheries to the Linn. You should start with the interconnects. With the system we get a pair of Linn interconnects and I have to say that those are not the “replace me immediately” kind of wires, supplied only to test if the equipment works. Those are truly nice cables, that – bear this in mind – we get for free. But it turns out that in some cases, their character starts to dominate the reproduced sound. Linn sounds with a transparent, precise sound, but it should be “pushed” in the direction of saturation of the lower registers. And the mentioned cable sounds with a light sound. So you could immediately think about another cable, in my case the Wireworld Silver Eclipse 5, but I also think that the Eclipse 5² would be a good choice. The second thing is the loudspeakers. I mentioned the strong, rigid mid-bass – it will give every setup the right pace and coherence, but below that the amplifier behaves not very tamed, not keeping the reverbs of a bass guitar or the contrabass in hand. This is one of the differences between the integrated amp and the split system. The first one sounds more “withdrawn”, not showing the big volume of the instruments. Fortunately the Linn does not reproduce the bass very strong, so probably this element of the sound will not be apparent. It is a must to give the electronics loudspeakers that are rather full and fleshy than ultra precise – much better the Chario than PMC. I didn’t mention the Chario by coincidence. Completely not! It turned out, that the Scotsman met the Italians in my home and this was a magic meeting. I heard a sound coming in the direction of the one I have in my system, also the one I heard from a complete Majik system with active cross-overs and tri-amping. Chario paired with the Linn offer full, big sound. Let us attach speakers like the Harpia and it will be far from good. Precision will be top notch, as well as the speed, but the loudspeakers will not improve anything. The Chario will be different – they need discipline, with the tested devices they sounded just right. We will not have ultra-precise drawing of the instruments, in the end the system is not so expensive, and resolution has its boundaries, but we will be surprised with that what could be achieved. The amplifier Majik I is equipped in two elements that I need to talk about. The first one is the gramophone preamplifier. This is an expansion board that can be plugged into the mainboard of the amplifier – depending on the application we have a line input or an MM preamp. Like I wrote during the test of the system in “Audio” this is a very good preamplifier, although it only accepts MM cartridges (it can be exchanged to an MM/MC one – just like in the Kontrol). With the Babele Bluenote mounted in the turntable Piccolo of the same company it was very nice. RCM Audio Sensor Preludium IC is much better, but you should not forget, that it costs not much more than the whole Majik… I think, that if we are not planning anything better for straightening the RIAA curve from the 3000-4000zl price range, then the little board in the “I” will be fully sufficient. The second “additional” element is the headphone amplifier. This is a nice device, but you have to watch out that it will not become too harsh. The best sound was with the expensive headphones AKG K701, because their slightly soft character did not allow any excess. With the model AKG K271 Studio the first plane was occupied with the midrange, without the bass and with veiled treble. On the other hand the Ultrasone PROLine2500 were a bit aggressive, but this could be liked, due to the very good dynamics. In general – you have watch out what you plug into it. DESCRIPTION )
The Majik CD player was tested by me some time ago in system comprising also a preamplifier and a power amplifier for “Audio”, so I knew what to expect. All Linn devices, regardless of their price or their purpose share the same enclosure (this is not true for the Sondek 12SE turntable for obvious reasons). This “patent” was tested for many years in Cyrus, and to some extent in Naim and Arcam, so it found its place also in the Scottish Linn. It seems easy, but – I believe – it is quite hard to execute. “It’s just enough” to design the separate components in all lines so they fit in a standard enclosure. Two goals can be reached that way: cutting costs (the enclosure is usually a big point on the expense list) and improvement of its quality. In Cyrus and now in Linn all the cut costs were put in quality. The whole Majik series has a rigid, full aluminum enclosure. It is composed of four main elements: cast front, in the center of which an element specific for the type of the device is added, a “glove” – thick aluminum plate bent in a way that it composes the top, sides and bottom of the enclosure, and the actual chassis with the back plate screwed to it. Simple and good looking – there are no screws on top, and the system looks aesthetical with a touch of luxury. It is not by accident that Linn wins awards for design. Majik CD Like I mentioned earlier every device has a specific element of the front panel. The CD player has a flat aluminum plate with an opening cut for a blue, quite readable display, and the loading tray. There are also some buttons – only the main functions can be accessed there. When we look at the back, we see something that – I think – should be a standard for a device being part of a system: besides a pair of analog RCAs, digital coaxial and optical output we have ports for connection to other elements of the system – RCAs (like in Marantz) and CAT5 (Ethernet) with the RS232 protocol. There is also the mains switch and a grounding terminal. The latter is here not for show, the company materials state clearly, that the device must be earthed. The IEC socket has three pins, so it includes the safety pin, but not in all home electricity installations it is truly earthed. Linn uses impulse power supplies in all its elements and all this is probably to assure their proper operation.
Ok – let’s pull off the “glove”. We immediately see some things. First of all the enclosure – to the top cover another plate of aluminum has been glued, making it less perceptible for resonances. This solution called “Stealth Mat” has been used by Arcam for quite some time. The second thing is related to electronics: Majik CD is an almost complete DVD player (DVD/DVD-A/CD) with the DVD formats blocked in software leaving only the CD and MP3 alone. Majik-I )
The amplifier was packed in an almost identical enclosure. In the front we have also a big blue display and a few buttons. There are also two mini-jack sockets – one is a headphone amplifier and the other is an AUX input for an external source like a MP3 player or iPod. There is a lot of connectors on the back – five line inputs, turntable input (MM), that can be exchanged for a line one if needed, recording output and a preamplifier output. There are also two pairs of gold plated speaker terminals and an IEC power socket and a power switch. To the far right we have two CAT-5 sockets with the RS232 protocol, allowing the Linn to be placed in a computerized multiroom installment. The insides are interesting. Similar to other amplifiers of the series also the integrated uses the Chakra technology. It means that in the power amplifier two technologies were combined – IC and solid state (2 transistors per channel). Until a certain power level only the IC is active – in this role the TDA7293, but when the signal level is higher the transistors kick in (a complimentary pair of bipolar Sanken 2SA1386 + 2SC3519). This allows for the use of a smaller heat sink than usual. In the model “I” it is a curved, double, thick aluminum plate, screwed to the bottom of the enclosure. In the power amplifiers a small fan is mounted to increase the heat exchange, but it is missing here. And good… The source selector is based on ICs, similar to the volume control – in this role the PGA4311 from Burr-Brown. Large part of the PCB is occupied by logic steering the power stage. The circuitry is all SMD, and the inputs are not gold-plated. Two words about the power supply – it is an impulse one, but it does not resemble other impulse PSUs, it is much more complicated, with large transformers and a very thorough voltage filtration on the side of the amplifier and the mains. The remote is a system one, so it has many buttons.
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