Do I go active with my Linn 5140s ?

FYI, just posted similar question at Linn forums:

http://forums.linn.co.uk/bb/showthread.php?tid=926&pid=9611#pid9611

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?

They are the new Chakra cards. I believe the adapter that Linn sells now is actually to fit the new "Chakra" style cards into old amps so they don't have to manufacture two styles for each speaker type (just the adapter cards themselves).

My thinking on adjusting the gain on the amp is to balance the dB output level for each driver within a given speaker. For instance, boost the treble to match the same SPL level as the other drivers in the speaker. I suspect at worst I'd only adjust the gain for ONE of the drivers. Best case, Linn has it perfectly balanced and it I don't need to change anything (which I suspect they do). The only other reason would be to boost treble, for instance.

Hopefully someone can post their experience/insights into whether it is even worth fiddling with the gain for individual drivers.

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.

The Chakra amp manual says that the per-channel gain controls are only for when Aktiv cards are installed. If you aren't running Aktiv the manual says you should leave them at setting 3 (which is 0 dB gain).

Perhaps for older amps different advice was given?