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Linn Sara - modern life

flatpopely

flatpopely

Prog Rock/Moderator
Purchase of a pair of Sara's will lead to an in depth review against Tannoy Eyris DC3. The DC3s are stunning, fast, tight, detailed and musical. Will the 23 year old Sara's hold a candle to them?

I listened to a pair of new Sara's in '86, I was blown away by their ability to engage me in the music. The DC3s do it as well but in a 'tighter' way.

Full report soon - this is not a foregon conclusion!

Andrew
 
Saras today sound strangled and squawk with a huge mid peak and a treble that's either chrome plated or tinny depending on the tweeters yours have - wonderful on rim shots but not much else IMO; and please don't start me on the ghastly Sara 9, which got worse and worse with each pair we had on dem; the beginning of a very bad time for Linn until the early nineties - I'd much rather have a pair of Spendor SP1's myself, oh heck, even CREDO's and sacrifice some scale for a more natural reproduction of voice.......
 
DSJR said:
Saras today sound strangled and squawk with a huge mid peak and a treble that's either chrome plated or tinny depending on the tweeters yours have - wonderful on rim shots but not much else IMO; and please don't start me on the ghastly Sara 9, which got worse and worse with each pair we had on dem; the beginning of a very bad time for Linn until the early nineties - I'd much rather have a pair of Spendor SP1's myself, oh heck, even CREDO's and sacrifice some scale for a more natural repro
Click to expand...
 
The tweeter issue can be sorted by one or two methods, or both, as for the rest, well they lack detail compared to modern designs, but the bass is exceptional and the ability to engage pretty much unrivalled.

In common with other speakers that deviate from a flat FR they are room-critical, however, and of course need a current-rich amp in front.
 
DSJR said:
Saras today sound strangled and squawk with a huge mid peak
Click to expand...

Well I've had a pair since about 1985, and they last saw service just before I got my ATC's. My recollection is that the mid is recessed, not peaky. As for comparing them to a modern design, I have done that against the roughly £700 per pair PMC DB1+ and the SARAs are easily the better speakers. You have to go to £2k+ modern designs to beat them. Although it makes a terrible load, the isobarik bass loading does give you just the tightest bass you can get.

Clif
 
cliffpatte said:
Well I've had a pair since about 1985, and they last saw service just before I got my ATC's. My recollection is that the mid is recessed, not peaky. As for comparing them to a modern design, I have done that against the roughly £700 per pair PMC DB1+ and the SARAs are easily the better speakers. You have to go to £2k+ modern designs to beat them. Although it makes a terrible load, the isobarik bass loading does give you just the tightest bass you can get.

Clif
Click to expand...

The way Linn inflated their prices, the £2-3K pair level is where the Sara's would be at now. 'Briks would be around £5 - 6K these days. I'd still rather have ATC 45's or Spendor S9e's but they're rather a larger kettle of fish.

The mid being recessed could be room acoustics but obviously I can't be sure. The Sara bass was tight and I think it went down to 40Hz, but there was a cancellation further up by Linns measurements that a room was supposed to lift, giving a sort of flat bass response. The mid was purely at the mercy of KEF. Early saras without the framing of the grille were incredibly quacky. vertical entry (!!!) XLR ones from 82 - 84 were the best, but KEF tried very hard to discontinue the B110 in Kans/Isobariks and the B200 in the Sara and all of Linns models suffered badly in the mid eighties and I don't think Linn ever recovered from this, although later Isobariks weren't bad as I remember.
 
Of course these were mine. I gave them away for a song as I wanted them to go to someone who appreciated them and would continue to love them.

Essentially they give the 'essence' of music. I bought them as an interim measure whilst awaiting on the isobaricks but time children and family got in the way........

However to seriously improve on the Saras one has to spend a lot more dosh.

I now have Shahinian Obelisks that cost 20X more than second hand Saras. The Obs are a much better loudspeaker but you pays yer money and takes yer choice.......... the Saras are in excellent condition including the original grills.

I just hope the lucky bstd loves them......

Cheers,

DV
 
It's not "cancellation". The Sara's, as with the Kans and Briks, and SBL's, are wall-proximity designs which use no baffle step compensation in the crossover, and rely on the wall relection to boost the bass and counteract the effect of diffraction. The advantage is greater sensitivity; these speakers run the tweeters without attenuation, hence their sensitivity is 87 dB.

As with most things in life, lunch ain't free, and such designs typically suffer a droop in the upper bass.

What do you mean by "Linn ever recovered"? They surely prospered quite nicely, until very recently, which has nothing to do with B110's or B200's.

They did drop the ball in their first attempts to make more affordable, less narrow-focussed, and more easily buildable designs, ie the Index, Helix and Nexus, which varied from awful to average, but that hardly dented the company's progress.

Things got back on track with the excellent Kaber.
 
OK, one night of listening already done! There is just something so right about the way they reproduce music. The Tannoys are the essence of modern speakers and sound very cultured, smooth and detailed with great imaging. The Saras don't image as well and they 'appear' to be less detailed. However even after only one day I think their ability to follow the rythmn and timing are way beyond the Tannoys. Bass seems lighter but is infact deeper than the Tannoys whilst being more dynamic. Their depth is superb too. I can't hear the lumpy repsonse people talk about although maybe the fact they sound a bit 'shut in' compared to the Tannoys is a result of this, or maybe its colouration. A 'Trip to the Fair' by Renaissance had the hairs on the back of my neck standing up, I have never hear Annie Haslams voice like that before, it sounded like she was in the room! I'll post a full review after I get my Zener/NAP250! However I don't think the Tannoys will be staying!!!!

As to the particular pair I have bought from DV, they are a credit to your Sir! They have been very well looked after and in 23 years only have one tiny mark. This morning I tightened up all the bolts on the drivers and stands, glued back some of the grill strips and gave them a very good polish with finest beeswax. They look like new, I kid you not. The grills are getting a bit tired but I prefer them without anyway. They are in a loving home, fear not. Once I get the amp I'll post a pic of my system in all its glory.

Regards

Andrew
 
Sounds very interesting, Andrew - I owned sara's from '83 until I bought Kabers in '93. The Sara's definitely needed a good amp, but were very 'musical'.

Mick.
 
RustyB said:
It's not "cancellation". The Sara's, as with the Kans and Briks, and SBL's, are wall-proximity designs which use no baffle step compensation in the crossover, and rely on the wall relection to boost the bass and counteract the effect of diffraction. The advantage is greater sensitivity; these speakers run the tweeters without attenuation, hence their sensitivity is 87 dB.

As with most things in life, lunch ain't free, and such designs typically suffer a droop in the upper bass.

What do you mean by "Linn ever recovered"? They surely prospered quite nicely, until very recently, which has nothing to do with B110's or B200's.

They did drop the ball in their first attempts to make more affordable, less narrow-focussed, and more easily buildable designs, ie the Index, Helix and Nexus, which varied from awful to average, but that hardly dented the company's progress.

Things got back on track with the excellent Kaber.
Click to expand...

Perhaps I should have phrased that comment and I agree with you about their getting back on track with the Kaber, itself not that wonderful at first IMO.

I'll justify that by saying the early tweeters were spitty and didn't like CD at all. The bass had a huge in-room rise at 56Hz and a coresponding huge drop at 120Hz approx, calling for very careful positioning. The passive crossover if single wired caused any flexure of the bass unit to feed electrical signal to the mid driver, which wasn't mechanically coupled to the bass unit.

I had a pair of original aktiv Kabers brought in for a tweeter upgrade some years ago. We replaced them with the meshless ceramic ones which stood proud of the apertures slightly. Listening afresh after many years (my mate with Kabers had long since gone over to many Klouted Keltiks, which I found rather ballistic in presentation, although my mate got them much better after listening to my ATC100A's......) I found the Kabers very sweet with a fine midband - Much better!
 
flatpopely said:
OK, one night of listening already done! There is just something so right about the way they reproduce music. The Tannoys are the essence of modern speakers and sound very cultured, smooth and detailed with great imaging. The Saras don't image as well and they 'appear' to be less detailed. However even after only one day I think their ability to follow the rythmn and timing are way beyond the Tannoys. Bass seems lighter but is infact deeper than the Tannoys whilst being more dynamic. Their depth is superb too. I can't hear the lumpy repsonse people talk about although maybe the fact they sound a bit 'shut in' compared to the Tannoys is a result of this, or maybe its colouration. A 'Trip to the Fair' by Renaissance had the hairs on the back of my neck standing up, I have never hear Annie Haslams voice like that before, it sounded like she was in the room! I'll post a full review after I get my Zener/NAP250! However I don't think the Tannoys will be staying!!!!

As to the particular pair I have bought from DV, they are a credit to your Sir! They have been very well looked after and in 23 years only have one tiny mark. This morning I tightened up all the bolts on the drivers and stands, glued back some of the grill strips and gave them a very good polish with finest beeswax. They look like new, I kid you not. The grilles are getting a bit tired but I prefer them without anyway. They are in a loving home, fear not. Once I get the amp I'll post a pic of my system in all its glory.

Regards

Andrew
Click to expand...

I don't mean to be rude to the Tannoy Eyris, but many dealers didn't care much for them at the time and they weren't too successful as I remember - Tannoy were going through an iffy patch at the time as well, as many makers do occasionally.

Glad you like the Saras and will take time to get them to sing for you...
 
The ZAP250 (Zener NAP250 - sort of sad but still catchy) arrives next week and then the Sara's will fly. To be honest they sound damn fine with a weedy NAP90.3 driving them. I do think the Eyris are very good at what they do, sort of a cross between hi-fi and studio nearfield monitors but they don't get into the music like the Sara's. A bit like when I borrowed a Quad 44 405 combo, very detailed but lifelesss compared to my much cheaper Onix OA21. The Sara's should not be this good should they? I mean the Eyris are £1300 brand new and the 20 year old Sara's are better, what is going on?
 
"I mean the Eyris are £1300 brand new and the 20 year old Sara's are better, what is going on?"

I have lost the receipts but I think that the Saras were around £650 and the stands another£100 FFS expensive stands! However the Saras really needed those stands.

So what would that be today? About £2-3K??

Like wine they mature with age??

You're a lucky bstd and I should have charged more?

Cheers and you shouldn't really enjoy them so much!

Glad that they have found a loving home,

DV
 
I'm sure we all have a few moments that really made an impression in our hifi history. For me, the first was in Boston when I heard Magnaplanar MGIIIs driven by a Mark Levinson pre/power and a modified AR turntable. This was followed by a friend's system at University consisting of LP12/LVV, Quantum pre/power (think it was Quantum - very hair-shirt, poor man's Naim) and Heybrook HB2s (He just got Grace Jones Slave to The Rhythm - amazing!!), which led me to Tottenham Court Road where I heard the LP12 with an Ittok, Asak, Naim amps and.... Linn Saras!

That demo left a deep impression on me. Those pug ugly speakers just couldn't be sounding as fun as this. It was so easy to pick up the rhythm of just about anything we put on the LP12 and the bass was just so... funky!

Very impressive but sadly unaffordable for me so I ended up with a Manticore Mantra, Cambridge amp and MA 352 speakers.... Great stuff, considering my budget but I still could never quite get those Saras out of my mind.

I haven't heard a pair since and I wonder whether they'll still delight me as they did back then (mid eigthies).
 
rommell said:
I'm sure we all have a few moments that really made an impression in our hifi history. For me, the first was in Boston when I heard Magnaplanar MGIIIs driven by a Mark Levinson pre/power and a modified AR turntable. This was followed by a friend's system at University consisting of LP12/LVV, Quantum pre/power (think it was Quantum - very hair-shirt, poor man's Naim) and Heybrook HB2s (He just got Grace Jones Slave to The Rhythm - amazing!!), which led me to Tottenham Court Road where I heard the LP12 with an Ittok, Asak, Naim amps and.... Linn Saras!

That demo left a deep impression on me. Those pug ugly speakers just couldn't be sounding as fun as this. It was so easy to pick up the rhythm of just about anything we put on the LP12 and the bass was just so... funky!

Very impressive but sadly unaffordable for me so I ended up with a Manticore Mantra, Cambridge amp and MA 352 speakers.... Great stuff, considering my budget but I still could never quite get those Saras out of my mind.

I haven't heard a pair since and I wonder whether they'll still delight me as they did back then (mid eigthies).
Click to expand...

I heard them in '86 and of course now! They are as good as I remember.
 
The Sara shouldn't be dismissed as some old clunker.

It was, I'm pretty sure, the first speaker ever to use compound coupled midbass units in a two way, which is trickier than a three-way due the problems of resonance in the cavity.

The moulded baffle would have required a pretty major investment in design and manufacture.

Cabinet rigidity was central to these early Linn designs; the Sara scores on being very compact for it's bandwidth, and is well damped. One subtle touch is the way the internal wiring is trapped between the rear B200's magnet and the rear panel, acting as a brace.

The Kef woofers were damped and the dust caps replaced with custom polystyrene units.

They use good quality terminals (no crappy binding posts here), which was typical for Linn.

In fact, the only internal parts to upgrade are the crossover caps, and maybe the internal wiring.
 
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