Do I go active with my Linn 5140s ?

Going active is a significant upgrade. My experience was with a somewhat more modest Linn system than yours or Kennyt's. However, I would second that bass improvement was notable.

If you're hesitant about the cost, you can always experiment with a couple of smaller Linn amps like the LKs, which are pretty cheap used nowadays. You could do it for under $1000. If you like the active setup, you can later upgrade to a bigger Chakra and sell the LKs at little if any loss. It will also give the newer Chakras time to appear on the used market at a lower cost.

You would have to check with Linn as to whether there are newer version Aktiv cards for Chakra amps that work with 5140's. Since the 5140 and it successor, the Espek, are now discontinued, they may never have made new version Aktiv cards for those speakers for Chakra amps.

However, that issue aside, it ultimately doesn't matter. If you can find old Aktiv cards, either second hand, or remaining stock from a Linn dealer, you can buy an adaptor from Linn. The adaptor allows old style Aktiv cards to fit the newer Chakra amps.

Rsnodgrass... out of curiosity, can you tell me whether the Aktiv cards you had installed are new Chakra cards, or are they the old non-Chakra cards with an adaptor?

Also, what would be the reason to adjust the gain on the amps?... to play louder...to play relatively inefficient speakers...or something else?

I was told by Linn that the adaptor allows you to put old cards into new Chakra amps. I didn't ask whether the adpator also worked the other way around, i.e. to put new cards into the older amps. I had contacted the Linn Helpline about this since I have five active speakers as part of a HT using the older amps and cards. I wanted to know whether I could still use the cards if I upgraded to Chakra amps in the future. They said I could with the adaptor.

There are some Linn speakers where the tweeter can be adjusted. I was unaware of gain adjustments in the amps though. Are we talking about the same thing??? You can't have gain adjustments in aktiv operation, or you're not supposed to. Amps are supposed to have the same gain in multiamping. That's why Linn amps all have the same gain in the first place...so you can use any combination of their amps if you uprgade to passive or active multiamping.

Okay, I think I got this figured out now.

The older Linn amps have a fixed gain, unlike the amps from the "C" series Chakra and forward. The fixed gain is essentially identical in all of the older amps. For example, it is 28.6 dB for the LK 85/140, 28.5 dB for the Klout, 28.6 dB for the AV 5125. I note that in the owner's manual for the "C" series Chakra amps, the gain is adjustable, with an asterisk at 28.6 dB, which is the gain for the older amps. The new Majik series Chakra amps also have this. So 28.6 dB must be the default gain setting. When you say that setting 3 is 0 db gain, I take that to mean that setting 3 is actually 28.6 dB. The "0" is actually the deviation from 28.6 dB

When you install an Aktiv card in the old amps, the treble card, and sometimes the bass card, has a little adjustable dial on it to adjust signal strength. Some of the adjustments will even mute the Aktiv board. When the dealer installs the Aktiv card, he will adjust the dial of the signal strength to tune the amp. There's a chart in the owner's manual for the setting to be recorded so that you know what it is.

I am not familiar with the new Aktiv cards. However, my speculation is that the new cards may not have the signal level adjustment. Rather, the signal level adjustment appears to have been moved into the amp.

So with the old set-up, the amp gain is fixed, the card is adjustable. And with the new set-up it is reversed. It is the amp that has the adjustable gain, and it is the card that is (I'm guessing) fixed. Is this correct? Are your new cards without an adjustable signal strength dial? That would explain things.

Anyway, the purpose of the adjustment is to tune the amp, so by all means play around with it if you wish. However, the Linn dealer who installed the cards should have already tuned it. You might want to check what the settings are so that you can restore them in case you mess things up and want to return to the original setting.

Sorry to Dfwlistener for hijacking his thread.