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A solid indicator of a device being firmly part of the high end is when the prices involved would translate to something genuinely interesting on autotrader.co.uk. When Simon Lucas looked at Linn’s flagship Solo 800 monoblocks, the £75,000 per pair asking price would have secured a brand new Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio - a car capable of taking you and four terrified friends to the sort of speeds that guarantee incarceration. The £47,000 asking price of a pair of the newly launched Solo 500 you see here ‘only’ translates to a brand new VW Golf GTI Clubsport - but it’s still not money you’d lose down the back of the sofa.
The Solo 500 takes the ideas that Linn unveiled in the 800 and makes them a little more accessible. Power drops to a mere 250 watts into 8 ohms, which doubles to become 500 into 4 ohms - figures that should still be able to allow for pretty much free choice of speakers. Like the flagship, it makes use of Linn’s ‘Adaptive Bias Control’ which constantly monitors the amplifier output to ensure the performance is optimal. This is partnered with the company’s Utopik high speed power supplies, which use multiple feedback loops to measure output versus input at each stage of the power supply, filter out mains-borne noise and eliminate hum.
Something else that Linn has worked hard at is how the Solo 500 ventilates and cools itself. Linn calls it a ‘Hybrid Cooling Matrix’, and it takes a multi-stage approach to keeping the Solo 500 at the right temperature. The main components in the amp itself are mounted to a sub-chassis structure - consisting of a highly conductive block of hard-anodised aluminium mounted to a thermal plate, this sub-chassis draws heat away from the electronics beneath and is isolated from the amp’s main casework. If you are being positively merciless though, the Solo 500 will pivot to using cooling fans. Not just any old fan, though - this unit is controlled by its own FPGA chip which constantly monitors how hard it needs to run, before air is sent down channels under the top plate to draw heat away from the internals.
Connectivity is straightforward but comprehensive. Each amp has the choice of balanced and unbalanced inputs and matching looped outputs (you know, just in case you would like to use more than one £23,500 amplifier per speaker) and high quality speaker terminals that allow you to use your preferred termination.
Sound Quality
If there was a single word to sum up the Solo 500, it would be ‘grip.’ Actually, it would be ‘GRIP’, chiselled in four-foot tall letters into a granite monolith. For the purposes of testing, I make use of a pair of Kudos Titan 505 speakers - at just ten grand the pair, they are a mere amuse bouche for the Linn but what the Solo 500 does with them is still indicative of some serious capability. What the Kudos respond to brilliantly is enough current being delivered to ensure their counter-firing drivers are under complete control. With the Linn involved, that control is absolute.
What this translates to is a performance that is an uncanny blend of agility and unflappable precision. There is no tempo or time signature that you can ask the Solo 500 to reproduce where the result isn’t utterly convincing. This speed hasn’t been bought at the expense of depth, either - the bass on offer here is deep, and possessed of the texture and detail that means it is an organic extension of the rest of the frequency response and not something that feels tacked on. Whether you want the effortless thwack of a kickdrum or the swell of a full orchestra, the Linn is ready to deliver it.
The rest of the frequency response is no less accomplished. Like the larger Solo 800, if you are looking for a device that delivers more drama than is organically in the recording itself, this might not be the device for you - the Linn is not an effects box. It doesn’t overemphasise any aspect of the frequency response or pull any other attention-grabbing tricks while it goes about its business. It will also reflect changes made elsewhere in the system with unerring precision and accuracy. My habit of having more than one turntable running at any one time demonstrated this beyond reasonable doubt.
What has come to genuinely impress me in the time that the review units have been in and running, though, is that this potency, transparency and sheer realism is combined with a tractability and user-friendliness that is genuinely unusual for an amplifier this capable and revealing. Many amplifiers at this sort of price will treat poor recordings with something between derision and brutality. The Solo 500 will make you aware that not everything sounds quite as good as it could do - but it then cracks on with ensuring that your choice sounds as good as it possibly can.
There’s another wrinkle in this which is subjective but feels very repeatable. This amp is breathtakingly dynamic, realistic and capable. It’s also… fun? I’ve been a fan of Linn products for many years and admire the company’s focus and attention to detail, but haven’t always felt the level of engagement that some rivals are capable of. Here there have been points where the engineering, the chunky price tag and the volcanic power output have been completely and utterly secondary to the fact that I’m singing along (badly), lost in whatever moment the music creates. I’ll be sad to put them back in their boxes in a way that isn’t always the case.
Living with the Solo 500
Nothing in the accompanying pictures or anything I write will really convey quite how the Linn feels in the metal, but I am compelled to try my best to get at least some idea across. Pretty much everything ever tested on Sound Advice would qualify as ‘well made’ and many things we’ve tested are some way above that, offering a level of build and finish that ensures you know it is a costly item - even if what you know about audio equipment wouldn’t stretch to the back of a stamp.
The Solo 500 is a step up from this again. Every aspect of the materials chosen and the manner in which they have been assembled speaks of a level of fastidiousness that, to put it bluntly, requires this sort of budget to achieve. This is a device that feels somewhere between extremely sophisticated laboratory equipment and high-end jewellery, and it goes an awfully long way to alleviating any chance of buyers remorse when two relatively small boxes you paid £47,000 for show up on your doorstep.
Those boxes are relatively small because the amp itself is usefully compact. Some of Linn’s rivals need a lot more space, and a huge amount more mass, to achieve the numbers the Solo 500 does. It means that, where the Solo 800 is the sort of device that will need accommodation outside of a conventional rack, the 500 will happily park itself on a normal shelf. This might be a very high-end device, but it’s a very convenient one too. The one caveat to this is, while the cooling arrangements of the Linn are extremely clever, it’s still a device that does its best work with a bit of space around it. In the accompanying video, there are shots of the two units sitting together on a shelf. This is to simplify filming them, and I’d generally suggest against doing so in reality.
There’s one other aspect of the Solo 500 I think belongs here too. It has often been the case when I have looked at Linn products that the company has been, umm, keen to have them looked at in an all-Linn context. Here, they have been completely relaxed about the Solo 500s being used with a variety of other gear - indeed, no other Linn devices have featured. This confidence augers well for an amplifier that will work as happily in a non-Linn system as it will a Linn one.
Conclusion
While the Solo 500 is less expensive than the 800, there is no pretending it’s anything other than a lot of money. The thing is though, it’s a lot of amplifier too. It’s a compact, beautifully made, wholly tractable thing that, when the fancy takes you, can pin you to your seat and have you grinning like an idiot.
Listening notes
New Order Substance 1987
Not so much a greatest hits as an historical journey, this collection of New Order singles is an opportunity for the Linn to show off its dazzling articulation and transient speed while ensuring that the floor-fillers have the heft and weight they need.
Little Barrie & Malcolm Catto Electric War
Not too long ago, some Linn equipment would have struggled to look past the deliberately rough and ready presentation of this album. The Solo 500 revels in it, delivering the fabulous atmosphere and driving rhythms
Steve Miller Band Fly Like an Eagle
Of course, if you do give the Linn something immaculately mastered, the effect is pretty much like parking a chair in the studio. I’ve heard this album hundreds of times. I’ve never heard it sound quite like this.
If you have deep pockets but less space than some amplifiers at this sort of price require, the Solo 500 delivers serious audio thrills in a small and extremely entertaining package. This is a formidable and flexible bit of kit.
The whole premise of splashing out nearly £50k on a pair of muscular amplifiers is that your speaker choice is largely whatever you choose it to be. This is one of a small number of products on the Sound Advice site that could do justice to the magnificent Monitor Audio Hyphn speakers, but you really do have pretty much free rein.
Choosing electronics upstream of the Solo 500 is a rather more interesting thought exercise. You can of course stay in the warm embrace of Linn - we've looked at both the Selekt DSM and LP12 and there are matching Klimax versions of both that will do a splendid job of working with them... but what my testing has highlighted above everything else is that you don't have to be a true Linnie to see the appeal. I've done a big chunk of listening with a £26,000 transformer-coupled preamp from a tiny boutique American company - it's highly likely Linn doesn't know they exist, and never envisaged the Solo 500 being used this way, but nevertheless the combination has been brilliant. Don't think you need to stay 'in house' to make the Solo 500 fly.
