jimmymcfarrell
pfm Member
Finally got my active Sara’s buttoned up yesterday and looking at my other (standard passive) pair got me thinking: how were active Sara’s configured from the factory?
My understanding is as follows:
Standard passive Sara’s (early ones ie not Sara 9’s) have 2 separate crossover boards connected together to the single XLR input.
One of these boards feeds a single B200 woofer & the tweeter. The other board feeds the other B200 and a dummy tweeter (a resistor).
The active ones I’ve seen from the factory have 2 XLR sockets (bass & treble). Do these Linn built active Sara’s still have the dummy tweeter resistor in parallel with the actual tweeter? Else the bass input would have 2 woofers in parallel showing 4R and the treble input (if just connected to a single tweeter) would only be 8R.
This isn’t something I’ve had to consider with mine (yet) as I’ve brought each drive unit to its own input & have separate amplifiers for each. However if I wanted to use less amps & just have one amp for bass & one amp for treble (as per standard active Sara’s) and therefore power the two woofers in parallel off the same amp, what would I need to do keep the impedance the same across bass & treble inputs? Fit the 8R resistor off one of the old passive crossover boards in parallel across the tweeter input? Is this what Linn did when they built active versions of the Sara? All seems rather counter intuitive unless all the drivers are to be driven independently from each other and as this was never an option from the factory how did they do it. Going active but having to keep the bass drivers together in parallel & then still having to power the tweeter & dummy resistor from the additional amp doesn’t seem to be a great upgrade - especially when it’s not that much harder to separate all 3 drive units and power them all individually. Although I can’t comment on this as I’ve never heard “standard” active Sara’s (& don’t even know how they are configured) and have gone straight from basic passive to active with all the drivers powered by their own amplifiers; which was quite a jump indeed....... Just curious how Linn did Sara’s active if anyone knows?
My understanding is as follows:
Standard passive Sara’s (early ones ie not Sara 9’s) have 2 separate crossover boards connected together to the single XLR input.
One of these boards feeds a single B200 woofer & the tweeter. The other board feeds the other B200 and a dummy tweeter (a resistor).
The active ones I’ve seen from the factory have 2 XLR sockets (bass & treble). Do these Linn built active Sara’s still have the dummy tweeter resistor in parallel with the actual tweeter? Else the bass input would have 2 woofers in parallel showing 4R and the treble input (if just connected to a single tweeter) would only be 8R.
This isn’t something I’ve had to consider with mine (yet) as I’ve brought each drive unit to its own input & have separate amplifiers for each. However if I wanted to use less amps & just have one amp for bass & one amp for treble (as per standard active Sara’s) and therefore power the two woofers in parallel off the same amp, what would I need to do keep the impedance the same across bass & treble inputs? Fit the 8R resistor off one of the old passive crossover boards in parallel across the tweeter input? Is this what Linn did when they built active versions of the Sara? All seems rather counter intuitive unless all the drivers are to be driven independently from each other and as this was never an option from the factory how did they do it. Going active but having to keep the bass drivers together in parallel & then still having to power the tweeter & dummy resistor from the additional amp doesn’t seem to be a great upgrade - especially when it’s not that much harder to separate all 3 drive units and power them all individually. Although I can’t comment on this as I’ve never heard “standard” active Sara’s (& don’t even know how they are configured) and have gone straight from basic passive to active with all the drivers powered by their own amplifiers; which was quite a jump indeed....... Just curious how Linn did Sara’s active if anyone knows?
