Sonus faber is Latin for handcrafted sound, and Franco Serblin chose the name in 1983 for a reason that has governed the company ever since: he was not trying to build a piece of audio equipment. He was trying to build an instrument. The models are named for the luthiers and composers of Cremona and Vicenza — Guarneri, Stradivari, Amati, Il Cremonese — and the company still works from Arcugnano, outside Vicenza, in the same part of Italy.
The tapered, lute-derived cabinet arrived in 1993 and became the most recognisable shape in loudspeakers. It is not decoration. The curve that mirrors a violin's also stiffens the enclosure, which is the sort of coincidence good design keeps finding. Inside, the material choices run the same way: silk-dome tweeters, cellulose-pulp cones, cork damping chambers derived from the flagship, and driver baskets shaped after the camellia flower to break up resonance. Outside, solid walnut, Carrara marble, brass, and Italian leather, with wood grain hand-matched by artisans and the leather worked with centuries-old tools.
Every speaker is tuned by ear before it leaves. In a company this technically capable, that is a deliberate statement about what the last ten percent requires.
The range is unusually complete: Lumina and Sonetto at the accessible end, Olympica in the upper middle, Heritage for compact designs in the traditional manner, Homage carrying the instrument names — the Amati G5 among them — and above all of it the Suprema — a 40th-anniversary system of four columns and an external analog crossover, each main column a sealed 4.5-way with ten drivers.
Sonus faber with McIntosh amplification is one of high-end audio's most celebrated pairings — a pairing we host listening nights around — and Audio Research tubes suit these speakers just as naturally. Hear them here.
