Sigberg Audio Saranna active speakers
Norway seems to be one of the best places to live in the world. Standards of living are incredibly high, inequality is low, education and healthcare are world class and their EV adoption rate and environmental standards make the UK, USA and most of Europe seem like they’re stuck in the 19th century – because they are. Not content with being perhaps the best run country on earth, Norway gave the world A-ha one of the most talented pop/rock band of the 1980s, IMHO. Norway is also home to some serious audio companies including Electrocompaniet, Arendal Sound, Hegel and Tandberg. SEAS are based there too and remain one of the pre-eminent drive unit suppliers in the world. Sigberg Audio is of much more recent origin, having been founded in 2020 by Thorbjørn Sigberg to manufacture a range of actively powered speakers and subwoofers under the Sigberg Audio brand.
The firm’s philosophy is to design and build all its loudspeakers in house at its factory in Norway, they do outsource certain elements of production, the cabinets are manufactured in Europe, the drivers are sourced from specialist firms such as Scan-Speak, Sica and Wavecor, and rather than building its own amplifier modules the firm uses Hypex units. This is in truth what many loudspeaker manufacturers do, firms like ATC and Focal that manufacture their own drive units and circuits in house are something of a rarity.
The Saranna loudspeakers are imposing and heavy three-way active floorstanders measuring over a meter high and weighing 44Kg per cabinet. The drive units comprise a front facing coaxial, cardioid dispersion driver combining an eight-inch bass/midrange and polyamide tweeter compression driver. The woofers are twin rear facing reflex loaded eight-inch units (top and bottom of the cabinet) offering up to 24mm of linear excursion. On board amplification includes an active three channel Hypex nCore Class D amplifier with 600W output per side.
Crucially the Saranna has been engineered for its directional tweeter and midrange output to offer a cardioid (heart-shaped) dispersion pattern. The aim of a cardioid speaker is to minimize rear sound radiation which can bounce off the back wall and interfere with the main output emanating from the front of the speaker. It’s not dissimilar in its aims to the Kii Three speakers which combine drive units and DSP to minimise rearward radiation. Cardioid designs such as the Saranna can reduce rear radiating output by more than 20dB.
The twin bass drivers are reflex loaded and vent into a large rectangular port on the rear baffle of the speakercabinet facia. The tweeter and midrange have twin dispersion ports on either side of the cabinet near the top. Between the two rear facing woofers is a metal plate to which the active amplifiers are mounted internally. In terms of inputs the Saranna offers analogue RCA and balanced XLR inputs as well as digital inputs for optical (up to 96kHz), coaxial SPDIF and AES (up to 192kHz). Frequency response is quoted as 28-20 000 Hz to a tolerance of +/- 2.5dB.
Three basic presets are available via a push button on the rear of the speaker with options to increase or decrease bass output by 2dB. The ability to tailor in room response goes far beyond this however. Further equalization requires a Windows laptop to be connected to the Saranna via USB and a calibrated microphone to be connected to measure the output in room using REW software. Connection to a Windows laptop permits use of the Hypex Filter designer software which is essentially a nine-band parametric equalizer and enables bass response to be tailored to ameliorate room modes.
The Saranna is designed to be used with the magnetically attached grilles in place and the demo pair came without the optional plinth but rested on four Egeland Acoustics viscoelastic feet designed to isolate the speaker from its surroundings. The purpose of these feet is to both decouple and damp vibration in order to minimize vibration transfer to and from the speaker. My own experience with Townshend Seismic platforms under both audio equipment and loudspeakers has convinced me that controlled damping is superior to spikes. But if you are so inclined the Saranna also offers the option to fit spikes. Two contemporary cabinet finishes are available including black wood veneer sides on a satin black painted core, and grey wood veneer on a satin white painted core.
The cabinets lean back by four degrees to time align the drive units and the speakers were supplied by Purite Audio and installed with an Eversolo DMP-A8 streaming preamp which also permits correction of room modes using a calibrated UMIK-1 microphone and REW software. Connections from the Eversolo to the Sigberg Saranna were balanced XLR and they were set up around 20cm from the rear wall with virtually no toe-in as is recommended.
The listening
It’s sometimes tempting to look at a loudspeaker and have preconceptions about how it will sound, but with the Saranna that would be a mistake. Thorbjorn Sigberg may well be a metal fan, but he’s crafted a speaker that can handle all genres of music. I began by listening to the glorious I’ve been losing you from A-ha’s stunning Summer Solstice live set and it was clear right from the off that I was listening to an incredibly precise and detailed loudspeaker which has an uncanny ability to project an astonishingly three-dimensional soundstage. You can put that down to the cardioid dispersion pattern and coaxial drivers. The distinct timbre of Morton Harkett and Lissie’s individual voices on this track were beautifully reproduced, while the various plucked, strummed and struck acoustic instruments were rendered with superb timing and note delineation. The interplay between these master musicians was obvious, the effect was extremely engaging.
Keen to see how the Saranna dealt with dynamics and bass I selected Nevada from Kerala Dust on Tidal and I can say, without any doubt, that the Sarannas excel at dynamics with absolutely no signs of compression – at all. This makes music sound and feel live. The Sarannas are undoubtedly a loudspeaker which can go very low in room and move the floor should you desire. Yes, they will go very loud too, so if you enjoy high listening levels and creating that concert feel, you’ll love these. What did impress me was the way that the Sarannas go low but with excellent precision and zero overhang or boom their lack of interaction with the room thanks to DSP modelling was deeply impressive – despite being quite close to the back wall and having twin rear firing drivers in a ported box.
I always think a great test of any loudspeaker is how it reproduces piano and female vocal, so I selected Eleanor McEvoy’s Sophie from the album Snapshots. This is a stunningly intimate recording which, unusually, was recorded in the studio control room with Eleanor leaning over the pianist and singing. What was striking about hearing this on the Sarannas was the way Eleanor’s voice and the accompanying piano was brimming with detail. The leading edge of piano notes had tremendous attack, although I noted a degree of recess to the midrange and upper bass which lent the piano and indeed Eleanor’s voice a certain glacial quality in keeping with Sigberg’s Scandinavian roots!
This can no doubt be dialled out with the on board parametric EQ to some extent. That’s one of the key benefits of this speaker system – it gets all of the fundamentals right, while affording you the opportunity to tailor the sound to your specific room and preferences. It’s a flexibility which is lacking in many of the Saranna’s competitors and makes for an incredibly appealing design. It’s a full bandwidth floorstander with a tremendous amount of flexibility.
Conclusion
In summary this is a loudspeaker system which is superbly engineered, has astonishing dynamics, taut bass, reference standard temporal accuracy and presents music in a near holographic soundstage. For the price its levels of transparency and detail are exceptional and it can certainly punch hard and dig deep. Its only vice is a tendency to sound a little lean in the midband, which can occasionally make vocals and piano sound cooler and less full bodied than, for example, my own ATC speakers.
As ever there’s a large element of personal preference at play here. The ATC’s may offer a more natural midband, but they don’t have the DSP modelling available here to iron out in-room peaks, or indeed their exceptional facility to paint an almost architectural soundstage that makes you feel like you could step into it and walk around. I liked them a lot precisely because in their approach to sound reproduction they lean much more towards studio monitors and live sound and away from what I would term hi-fi sound. They don’t gloss over the rawness, dynamics and energy of a performance in an effort to sound comforting the way that quite a lot of hi-fi speakers do.
Few loudspeakers in this segment can match the Sarannas for sheer pace, dynamics or such exceptional imaging and it is these qualities which make the this such an engaging and fun loudspeaker to listen to across all genres of music. For the performance, flexibility and power on offer they are fantastic value and are strongly recommended. That such a complex and well executed design has been produced by a small company headed by a music loving CEO is nothing short of remarkable – his passion for live music and its power really shows in the finished product.