Lean sound. What's the cause?

Unless one spends BIG bucks on a multichannel receiver, these things necessarily compromise sound quality. In particular, volume controls are critical to sound quality and good ones cost a lot of money. So, most multichannel receivers go with cheap attenuators because that one component would otherwise swallow up a big proportion of the parts budget.

It's hard to guess how lean any particular component will sound in any particular system, much less, what "lean" means to you. Typically for me, it is not that cheaper solid state is tonally lean (weaker in midbass) as such gear tends to sound brittle, harmonically bleached (instrumental color, overtones seem stripped away) and mechanical sounding. Better solid state gear that avoid these problems tend to be a touch polite and dull (e.g., my friend's Hovland linestage, my Levinson Ref. No. 32). I also have a Placette Active linestage which I actually think is pretty good sounding, though just a touch hard sounding. Amoung solid stage gear, I generally like the sound of Ayre gear.

I currently run a tube linestage (Emotive Audio Epifania). I generally prefer the sound of tube gear myself. But, there is no easy way to characterize the sound of tube gear, particularly since tube linestages are MUCH more unpredictable in how they match up with other gear. The spectrum can be quite wide -- from extremely lean (e.g., most Audio Research gear) to extremely warm (e.g., Cary SL98). It's hard to say what you would like and what would work in your system. Personally, I've heard good tube linestages from VAC, Joule Electra, Shindo, Kondo, Audionote (uk), and VTL.

Jylee,

Is there a reason, then, that you need a linestage? Do you run other sources? Minimizing unnecessary junctions, such as interconnects and rca jacks, all the switching in a linestage, etc. might improve sound. A friend who uses a very good tube linestage has tried a number of tweaks to improve the sound. What he found was that even some very pricey switches for selecting sources degrade the sound, so instead, he bypassed the input selector and manually switches interconnects when going between phono and CD sources. Just another reason to minimize additional junctions/components if they are not necessary.

I recall that one manufacturer of amplifiers (I think it was Charlie Hanson of Ayre) stated that, in the right system (compatible impredances, short runs of interconnects) passive linestages or no linestage at all (like your use of the Linn's built-in attenuator to control volume) can be superior to active linestages of comparable price. The advantage of active linestages (better dynamics and sense of liveliness) is usually evident only when the design is substantially free of compromises (i.e., expensive).