Linn; Benefits of Tri-amping an Active System

The real deal with making your Linn system "Aktiv" is that you'll need to get the appropriate active cards that Linn designed to conveniently slip into your amplifiers. These cards are simply, active crossover networks. Bass, Mids and trebble. (Your current set up, as you've described it, is passive bi-amplification). Next, depending on the model of the speaker, the dealer clips out some jumpers on the speaker's passive crossovers and re-solders some wires to different spots on the crossover boards, essentially making it so that each speaker cable run is being connected diectly to each driver. The advantage to this, is that you now no longer have all these passive components in the way that would otherwise rob a good percentage of the amplifier's effort to get each driver to move. Imagine going for a jog in knee deep water. You have to spend more energy to move along at a good pace. Now, imagine moving up, onto the sidewalk to run. Less resistance... you move along at the same rate of speed with a lot less effort. You, (and the speaker) have become more effecient. More dynamic, simply by getting all that "water" out of the way. This is not unique to Linn speakers and electronics, Meridian has been using multiple amplifiers INSIDE each speaker for years. Having a seperate channel to drive each element in a speaker, is just a brilliant idea. For those Linn speaker owners that don't have Linn amplifiers, the crossover cards -or Aktiv modules - as Linn puts it, can be placed into a "Tune Box". This, you order from your local dealer as well and by doing so, you can run just about any two or three stereo amps for an aktiv bi-amp or tri-amp system.
One last note: some of the newer model speakers from Linn no longer require you to go into the box to get at the crossover. Bypassing the passive components inside is accomplished by how you move the flat jumpers on the back of the speakers.
Good luck!

Ah! My appologies, I re-read your post. So right about the active bi-amping. The speakers were orignially sold passive, active bi-amp or active tri-amp though. Of course, in typical Linn fashion, the passives could be converted to either bi- or tri-amp active sepeakers .. sorry for the mis-read on the original post.

Looking at an old Linn brochure, they list the frequency response as active: 45Hz-20kHz +/- 3dB and Passive at 65Hz-20kHz +/- 3dB.. this is pretty big. I'm in agreement with the other posts, bass should go lower(of course) but should be tight and controlled as well.
Kind regards