In the May 2009 issue, I gushed over the performance of Linn Products’ remarkable little bookshelf speaker, the Majik 109 ($1590/pair). In particular, I was struck by how I’d never heard any speaker at any price whose high frequencies sounded more natural, detailed, or pure than the 109’s. Then, wondering what a pricier Linn speaker might sound like in my system, I asked Linn which was their most expensive model that also incorporates the 2K tweeter-supertweeter array used in the Majik 109. The answer: the floorstanding Majik 140 ($2995/pair). Once I’d worked through my reviewing backlog, two 140s were on their way to my listening den.

Design The Majik 140 incorporates Linn’s 2K tweeter-supertweeter array, derived from the 3K and 4K arrays used in Linn’s more expensive models. The 2K comprises a 1.17″ (30mm) tweeter with a soft dome of polyurethane elastomer covering the 1.5–6kHz range, and a 0.5″ fabric-dome supertweeter for frequencies above 6kHz. Below this are two 6.5″-cone units that look identical but are not. The upper unit, which covers the region below 1.6kHz, uses a doped-paper cone and operates in a sealed enclosure. The lower unit is a dedicated bass driver with a glass-fiber-and-composite cone that operates in its own enclosure, vented to the rear, and reinforces the output of the midrange unit below 200Hz. The speakers are supplied with a pair of foam bungs which enable the user to plug the rear port for setups where the speakers are placed flush against a rear wall.

The Majik 140 is fitted with metal spike feet that are easily adjustable for precise leveling. Also available is an optional stand ($580/pair, not supplied for review) made from a single billet of aluminum, which is nearly five times heavier than the standard wooden plinth. Phillip Budd, Linn’s senior acoustic engineer, claims that this heavy plinth improves the Majik 140’s performance.

The Majik 140 is available in standard finishes of Black Ash, Rosenut, Walnut, Cherry, Oak, and White; high-gloss custom finishes are available for another $950/pair. My Walnut samples were attractive, but I have a soft spot for the elegant Cherry of my Majik 109s.

Sound
The Majik 140 can be single-, bi-, tri-, or quadwired, and single-, bi-, tri-, or quad-amped. I used a single amplifier and a triwire set of Acarian Systems Black Orpheus speaker cables. As I tested the speakers with my typical setup with a 48″ distance between the rear of the speaker cabinet and the back wall, I didn’t audition the speakers with the foam bungs.

The Majik 140’s midrange reproduction was beyond reproach: the sound of every instrument with significant content in that frequency region was rendered without colorations and with extraordinary detail. I can’t think of a purer midrange instrument than the clarinet, and the 140 reproduced virtuoso Anat Cohen’s instrument, as recorded on her Poetica (CD, Anzic 1301), with all the subtle inflections of a captivating live performance.

Every vocal recording that I played fared well with the Majik 140’s midrange presentation. Madeline Peyroux’s eclectic range of material on her Dreamland (CD, Atlantic 82946-2) was uniformly presented with sweet, silky, rich verisimilitude. However, I noticed something unusual when I cued up tracks from Tom Waits’s Real Gone (CD, Anti- 86678-2). In this recording, subtle low-level distortion has been intentionally added to Waits’s voice to give it a certain texture. Through the Majik 140, this distortion wasn’t subtle at all; the speaker was so revealing that the distortion seemed highlighted and rather disjointed when juxtaposed against the pristine rendition of the other instruments on the recording.

The Majik 140’s reproduction of jazz guitar was also captivating. In The Poll Winners: Barney Kessel with Ray Brown and Shelly Manne (CD, JVC XR-0019-2), Kessel’s archtop axe had a crystalline, bell-like quality in the upper register, and the rich, woody warmth of his lower-end chording made it obvious that he was playing through a vintage tube guitar amp.

As I’d expected, the 2K tweeter-supertweeter array that the Majik 140 shares with the Majik 109 rendered high frequencies with the same detailed, extended, and natural clarity I remembered from my time with those bookshelf speakers. I sat there analyzing Liam Sillery’s trumpet phrasing on his Outskirts (CD, OA2 22050): His melodic line in “Prana” was brassy and burnished but still light and airy, with all of his unique low-level dynamic articulation clear. The upper harmonic extensions of all of Sillery’s notes were reproduced with definition, air, and just the right amount of metallic bite.

The Majik 140 also mated well with well-recorded violins. Jenny Scheinman’s violin in “The Frog Threw His Head Back and Laughed,” from her 12 Songs (CD, Cryptogramophone CG125), sounded extended and appropriately sharp in the upper register, but also had a sweet, holographic, voluptuous quality throughout its range. Further mining my collection of string recordings, I dug into Evan Ziporyn’s Typical Music (CD, New Albion NA 128). The Linn’s reproduction of this piano trio grabbed my attention as I studied the interplay of members of the Arden Trio: Suzanne Ornstein’s searing, silky violin, and Clay Ruede’s woody, rosiny cello.

The Majik 140’s high-frequency resolution combined with its superb reproduction of transients to make it a breathtaking showcase for percussion recordings. In Second Interlude, from Philipp Vandré’s recording of John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (CD, Mode 50), the strings are modified to turn the piano into an 88-key percussion instrument. Every thwack, brnggg, and sfffzzt in this performance seemed to pop out of thin air, each sound reproduced within its unique dynamic envelope and a long, natural decay.

The Majik 140’s reproduction of the low end was superb: every bass instrument was reproduced with depth, forcefulness, speed, and no trace of coloration. I analyzed in detail Chuck Israels’ solo in “Our Love Is Here to Stay,” from Bill Evans’s Live at Shelly’s Manne Hole (CD, JVC JVCXR-0036-3). His double bass was warm and woody, with no overhang, and with a sense of drama in its lower register. Moreover, there was nary a trace of timbral change as Israels traversed the instrument’s entire range.

The Majik 140’s high dynamic range capability and realistic bass made it an excellent speaker for loud rock music. In preparation for an upcoming performance with my new R&B band, Souled Out, I’ve been woodshedding the repertoire of Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, and cranked up the Linns to analyze his original arrangement of “Bad Luck,” from The Very Best of (CD, Philadelphia International/Epic/Legacy 881697 272 88 2). The tuneful interaction of the opening bass line with the drum groove was stunning in its rhythmic coherence—I was unable to sit still. Cranking the volume further still for the title track of Hole’s Celebrity Skin (CD, Geffen DGCD-2 25364), I marveled at the clarity of Melissa Auf der Maur’s powerful bass line, which is easily lost in the mix through other speakers. And that infectious melodic hook in the chorus gave me chills through the Majiks.

A phrase that kept appearing in my notes was dynamic envelope, which was best realized with recordings of large orchestras. In David Chesky’s Piano Concerto, with pianist Love Derwinger and Rossen Gergov conducting the Norrlands Opera Symphony Orchestra (SACD/CD, Chesky SACD326, CD layer), the opening forceful piano passage, followed by the rich, dense transients, gave me the sense of a live orchestra playing in my living room.

The Majik 140 embodied the traditional Linn attributes in spades. With every jazz recording I played, the sense of pacing of the rhythm section was spot on, with perfectly tight phrasing and toe-tapping transients through all instruments’ frequency ranges. A word that kept popping up in my notes was coherence—the sense of musicians playing together in a room and listening carefully to each other. In Radio I-Ching’s rendition of Captain Beefheart’s “Abba Zabba,” from their The Fire Keeps Burning (CD, Resonant Music 004), I could easily hear how Don Fiorino’s growling lap-steel guitar was in near-telepathic communication with Andy Haas’s plunging bass line (actually played on an electronically altered soprano sax).

But the recording with which I best heard all of the Majik 140’s strengths was John Zorn’s Orphée, from his Mysterium (CD, Tzadik TZ8018). Although this musical polyglot is best known for his forays into free jazz, Jewish chamber music, Japanese hard-core, and film music, Orphée is my favorite work of his written in a traditional chamber-music format. The Linns unraveled every subtle detail of Tara Helen O’Connor’s airy flute, Stephen Gosling’s shimmering celeste, and every metallic transient of David Shively’s percussion battery, particularly his mallet instruments and his rich, clear, resonant bass drum.

All Linn
Linn requested that I also listen to the Majik 140 using their Majik DS-I networked D/A integrated amplifier, which Art Dudley reviewed in the March 2011 Stereophile. The request reminded me of a conversation I had over 20 years ago with the very astute Leonard Belleza, of New York City’s Lyric Hi-Fi. As we talked about Linn’s Sondek LP12 turntable, he told me that “Linn components are designed to sound their best when mated with other Linn components.” I approached the Linn-Linn pairing with some enthusiasm.

Using a test pressing of my jazz quartet Attention Screen’s new album, Takes Flight at Yamaha (CD, Stereophile STPH021-2), I compared the Majik DS-I’s amplifier section against my far more expensive combo of Audio Valve Eclipse line stage ($5699) and Audio Research Reference 110 power amp ($10,995)—a comparison even more lopsided when you take into account the fact that a significant portion of the DS-I’s price ($4200) is accounted for by functions and features other than amplification. Overall, the DS-I let the strengths of the Majik 140 speaker shine through. Most important, the speaker’s timbral neutrality was retained, and its superb reproduction of transients were left intact. Moreover, the DS-I let the 140’s full dynamic envelope shine, while nicely controlling the speaker’s bass.

There were some shortcomings compared with my more expensive tube rig, however. In “Sleeping Metronomes Lie,” my piano introduction sounded natural, but was a bit more veiled, with a touch of tension and brittleness, in the more highly modulated passages that came later. The Yamaha AvantGrand N3 electronic piano I was playing also sounded a bit less “woody” and more mechanical. In “The Deer and Buffalo God Churches,” Don Fiorino’s acoustic 11-string guitar was delicate and harmonically right, but not as airy as when played through my reference amplification rig.

Comparisons
I compared the Linn Majik 140 ($2995/pair) with Linn’s own Majik 109 bookshelf ($1590/pair) and the Epos M16i ($1995/pair).

As far as the midrange and high frequencies were concerned, the Majiks 140 and 109 sounded virtually identical. Of course, the larger 140 had much deeper bass, as well as superior high-level dynamics. Moreover, the 140 sounded more “relaxed” than the 109, as if it wasn’t working as hard to make music.

The Epos M16i’s reproduction of the midrange and resolution of detail were very close to the Majik 140’s. Although the Epos’s highs were as extended as the larger Linn’s, the latter’s highs were purer, especially with vocal sibilants. The M16i’s bass was natural and very clean; I’d say that its bass extension and high-level dynamic capability were somewhere between those of the two Linns.

Payoff
I was thrilled with my experience of the Linn Majik 140. It was everything I’d hoped it would be: a speaker that retains all the strengths of Linn’s remarkable Majik 109 bookshelf model, but with deeper bass extension, superior dynamic range capability, and a greater sense of ease. My conclusions are summed up in two lines lifted from my listening notes: “No compromises in a $2995/pair speaker.” “It doesn’t get much better than this for the money.”