Linn Klimax Solo 800 Mono Power Amplifier – First Look

All Image Credit: Linn

Linn of Glasgow, UK, is a world renown manufacture of high-end audiophile equipment and has just released the company’s first passively cooled, reference, monoblock power amplifier, the Klimax Solo 100. This latest design delivers 400W into 8Ω, 800W into 4Ω, and up to 1.2kW into 2Ω. THD+N is impressively low at 0.0004% @ 1KHz into 8 ohms, with a superb SNR of 98dB Ref 1W 20KHz, A-weighted, all with an “incredible efficiency”. The Solo 800 is a Class AB amplifier that uses eight pairs of output transistors in parallel, ensuring a suitably low output impedance to drive the most difficult of speaker loads.

According to Linn, the exceptionally low distortion specifications are a function of the amplifiers real-time ability to execute dynamic monitoring and error-correcting employing multiple digital and analog feedback loops. As a Class AB amplifier, the output stages bias currents need to be adjusted over time in order to maintain the optimum bias current ensuring the lowest possible crossover distortion. Linn tackles this issue using their Adaptive Bias Control technology. This technology is said to set the optimum bias current by measuring, sampling and digitizing the current supplied to the output transistors, feeding this data to a field programable gate array (FPGA) that in turn calculates the optimum bias point for the transistors. In so doing, implementing a digital control loop. This process ensures that component and device changes from aging and temperature regardless of volume levels are compensated for.

Such a high performing and powerful amplifier requires an equally impressive power supply. The Solo 800 uses the newly designed 2KW Utopik switch-mode power supply (SMPS) topology that features precession-regulated independent and isolated power rails. This high efficiency design is said to be immune to mains input fluctuations and noise. In order to minimize switching noise and improve efficiency a technique called ‘soft-switching’ is used where; a resonant tank circuit ensures that voltage across the power supply switch falls to zero before the switch occurs. Not only does this provide for “whisper-quiet” operation but any switching noise generated is said to occur outside of the human hearing range.

Driven hard this amplifier can produce significant heat that is dissipated not by fans, but silently by directly mounting the amplifier and power supply circuitry to the efficient, large surface area, precision machined heatsinks. Simple internal convection currents ensuring that internal components remain cool.

Rear panel signal connectivity is supported using; selectable balanced XLR or unbalanced RCA inputs with associated loop-though outputs, one pair of speaker binding posts and a 12VDC trigger I/O.

Finally, the Klimax Solo 800 is available in two finishes; black anodized or natural silver anodized, the fascia featuring a back-lit roundel highlighted by one hundred individual cool-toned LEDs that communicates the amplifier’s status to the user. Brightness can be set at three levels via the rear panel switch.