Ultimate Linearity

The first-ever Linn-designed drive units – a 6" upper bass and 8" woofer – were created for their flagship 360 loudspeaker. With their unique Pistonik motor system at their core, they achieve ultimate linearity across a prodigious excursion range, delivering dramatically lower distortion and greater accuracy than anything available elsewhere.

True Pistonik Motion

Pistonik produces flawless linear force over its entire range of in-and-out travel thanks to a very long-stroke motor topology with a specially extended magnet gap.

Major innovations throughout Pistonik’s design engineer out magnetic, mechanical, and thermal factors which together conspire to defeat linearity. When integrated into 360 loudspeaker systems, awesome volumes of air are moved, with absolute control, and the widest truly linear excursion of any low-frequency drive units, ever.

Advanced Suspension

To realise its full potential in the final drive unit design, a groundbreaking motor system requires an equally advanced suspension. Because Linn know everything about how their 360 speakers are driven and the forces at play, they had the freedom to create a far more extreme suspension system than the norm – pushing performance right to the edge, safely.

Advanced multi-physics simulation informed the design of an ideal partner to mirror Pistonik; a finely tuned, bespoke suspension that stiffens rapidly and predictably at the last possible moment, remaining under complete control with impeccable linearity right up to maximum excursion.

Optimised Materials

For both of these 6" and 8” drive units, Linn engineered a hard aluminium diaphragm. Aluminium is strong and rigid, allowing them to banish break-up behaviour to well above their operating frequency ranges. It is also light, keeping the moving mass of the drive unit down, and thereby improving overall efficiency.

Carefully optimised coupling of the diaphragm to both the surround and Pistonik motor system pushes resonance frequencies higher still, and lowers their magnitude.

Linn have finished the aluminium diaphragm to a high standard, presenting an attractively smooth and consistent surface for the most visible part of the drive unit that looks as refined as it sounds.

The New State of the Art

These Linn-designed upper bass and woofer units redefine the state of the art. Every element works together in service of ultimate linearity, delivering deeper, cleaner, more controlled bass, with total accuracy and the widest truly linear excursion of any low frequency drive units ever created.

Linn Pistonik Drive Units are on demonstration in our 360 Loudspeakers now at Billy Vee