advertisement


Roksan Sara tonearm

hifiaf

pfm Member
I'm wondering if anyone has tried the new Roksan Sara unipivot tonearm. I'm especially interested in comparisons to the Naim Aro, the Roksan Nima, and the Tiger Paw Javelin. Is it identical to the Audio Origami UniArm, or did Roksan implement any design changes?
 
Not really an answer to the whole of your question, but I would say that a Nima and ARO are so close as to not warrant the VAST difference in ££. I have used both on an LP12 but not head to head.

You have forgotten Hadcock arms, albeit pseudo-uni-pivots. I need a TOTALLY unbiased ear to do a head to head with an ARO, but suspect that there won't be a difference that justifies the ££ difference.
 
Funny, I thought the Aro justified the price difference. The Hadcock is the one I regret letting slip though the door though, great with a Decca and some fluid dampening.
 
Just as well that there is an ARO on the LP12 at the mo' then, if my memory is wrong ;) (It is a view shared with Tiger Paw, albeit they have a potentially somewhat biased outlook.)

Anyone want to lend me a Nima for a head to head? :)

You have to admire the engineering logic of Hadcock arms - the beautiful simplicity in the use of cheap and generally available component parts in the main. The fact that they sound good is a bonus.
 
I currently own two AROs; I must admit that having owned many tone arms over the years, I love the ARO; a great arm IMHO. Apart from the sound quality, they are so easy to set up, and they stay set up (unlike Hadcocks and Nimas).

I have a Hadcock too (not on a turntable at the moment). A nice arm , but not a patch on an ARO. I had a friend's Nima at home on an LP12 for a bit too.
 
I have used a Hadcock in the past - the one sat unused currently, and that stayed set once set. The only hassle in getting it set was getting all of the adjustments right - it is too adjustable - you need to get a good idea of where you need to be to get things right, so starting from scratch can be a total nightmare, until it suddenly it dawns on you....

The Nima here was a nightmare - the tracking weight slowly changed (increased) but when I raised that fact here, several people had had no such problem, so they obviously vary.

Nima v Ittok (my first arm change in 20+++ years of owning an LP12) - night and day - a deaf person should be able to tell, although some fishies still swear by their Ittoks.
 
Your experiences pretty much mirror mine, especially WRT to the varying tracking weight of the Nima. The problem with the Hadcock is that once the rubber on the counterweight goes, it's almost impossible to get it to stay in place, The last time I used mine, I used an XTC counterweight, but that in itself was a nightmare to set up!

This is why I like the ARO so much, so well designed; OK some don't like the lack of overhang adjustment, but you can get over that by cutting a different arm board.
 
I use the Nima, and I have experienced the drifting tracking weight and azimuth with the stock counterweight. The counterweight also sits far from the bearing with my Adikt. I would like to try the Tiger Paw sKale to see if that fixes these problems.

Looks like the Sara is still too new to have found any adopters on the forum...
 
Your experiences pretty much mirror mine, especially WRT to the varying tracking weight of the Nima. The problem with the Hadcock is that once the rubber on the counterweight goes, it's almost impossible to get it to stay in place, The last time I used mine, I used an XTC counterweight, but that in itself was a nightmare to set up!

This is why I like the ARO so much, so well designed; OK some don't like the lack of overhang adjustment, but you can get over that by cutting a different arm board.

The ARO is such a clean minimalistic design. Beautiful. I love mine!
 
……….. The problem with the Hadcock is that once the rubber on the counterweight goes, it's almost impossible to get it to stay in place...………………….,

I have not checked, and I am not about to drag the rubbers out to check, in case they aren't, but I would be VERY surprised if they were not standard O rings. If they are, removal of the old would be ten times the challenge of fitting new, but should be simple enough.

The ARO is such a clean minimalistic design. Beautiful. I love mine!

The infernal infinitely adjustable cueing system apart, I would say that a Hadcock is no less clean and minimalist than the ARO, in fact I would suggest that a Hadcock is more so. An ARO is, relatively, a chunky industrial thing, compare to the slender, small-scale construction of a Hadcock - Hadcocks don't even have the side peg for azimuth adjustment, just an eccentric counter-weight.

………………….. The counterweight also sits far from the bearing with my Adikt. I would like to try the Tiger Paw sKale to see if that fixes these problems....

If anyone can come up with some maths that provides an explanation as to why a heavy counter-weight, nearer the pivot, is an advantage, that'll be the first that I have seen. I asked about this before and I all I got was complete nonsense that proved the contrary when it was worked through. Heavier counter-weights are another fad.
They will, inevitably, be somewhat more of a faff to adjust (greater change in balance conditions with the same movement along the peg - the lever effect is mass x linear distance from fulcrum/pivot), but once set, so long as things don't drift, that hardly matters.
Increasing the counter-weight mass decreases the tonearm moment of inertia (aka effective mass) as moment of inertia is proportional to mass and distance SQUARED - take a crazy example, increase the mass two-fold, you halve the displacement from the fulcum, so you have half the moment of inertia for the counter-weight alone (which is just part of the effective mass of the tonearm). The lower the inertia/effective mass, the more "bouncey" the tonearm - all else equal, it will affect tracking, quite possibly tracking less well, especially if you assume that the original designer(s) knew what they were doing....
 
Last edited:
An ARO is, relatively, a chunky industrial thing..

It's an aesthetic thing; we'll just have to agree to differ on that one!

Regarding why a heavy counter-weight, nearer the pivot, is an advantage, I see that you started a thread on this subject a year ago and you clearly were not happy with the answers you got!

One of my AROs has a heavier counterweight, it came with the arm. Used with a Troika, the counterweight is very close to the bearing housing. There may be sound engineering reasons why this would be better, though whether or not that results in an improvement in sound quality, I have no idea. I'm obviously in a good position to test the theory, having two arms, one with a standard CW and the other a standard CW, but getting around to doing it is different matter!
 
Absolutely agree, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I can't say that looks of anything functional get very much consideration here.

A year ago there was no answer, so I could not have been happy or unhappy about something that never happened. There was lots of nonsense waffle...……………. I was after an explanation behind their use, not opinion on whether the current fad was correct in attributing "better" sound from heavier weights. I have not checked, but I believe that one explanation was an increase in moment of inertia!!!!!! The complete opposite of fact.

I've just had a look at a Sara online (£1900).

Nice-looking arm, with an interesting and different approach to getting the cable from the pillar into the armtube.

Basic design is an ARO copy, with the same pivot - carbide into "jewel". (I just LOVE all this bollox about jewel/sapphire bearings - it is PCA - poly-crystalline alumina - a VERY cheap and cheerful bulk industrial ceramic commodity - trillions of discharge lamps use it for the arctube material. Lots pf precious stones, including sapphire, just happen to be crystalline alumina. Damned fine marketing, something discharge lamp manufacturers missed out on, they just call it ceramic, to think - sapphire lamps.......)
 
Not angry, just by nature, totally factual - I am science-trained and that is the way that I think - question EVERYTHING, and expect logical, if questionable replies to those questions. :) It has paid my wages for 40 years.

Not interested in bollox or waffle either, for the very same reason. If I see patent bollox and can be bothered, I will point it out to be so too, most especially if it is glaringly so.
 
I’ve got three different counterweights for my Aro, the standard, the heavy option that Naim made and the TigerPaw Skale (I don’t think any of these are available any more). There are sound engineering principles/reasons for wanting the mass as close to the bearing housing. All three options do sound different.
 
Overall I found the Skale to be the best but the heavy Naim one was a close second. Both were surprisingly better than the standard - or better by a surprisingly clear margin.
 
I'll throw something in then, something that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the weight being nearer the pivot.

The major force setting and holding the azimuth is the pendulum formed by the counter-weight on the pin, because the axis of the armtube is above the axis of the counter-weight pin. The heavier the weight, the greater the moment of inertia of that pendulum, side to side movement, because the distance is unaffected - the centre-centre distance armtube/counter-weight pin is unchanged. (Note - azimuth weights on the bearing shell are just fine tuning, if needed, which on an ARO they seldom are, IME.)

Is that more stable holding of azimuth of an extent that is worth worrying about, hearable???? How does that compare to the effects of reduced tonearm effective mass???
 


advertisement


Back
Top