Is Sonus Faber’s affordable new
Venere 2.5 floorstanding loudspeaker more than just a beautiful body?
Of all the world’s great loudspeaker
companies, there is surely none more Italian than Sonus Faber? True, there
aren’t that many speaker makers based at the Mediterranean end of Europe – but
of those that so hail from this part of the world, this company occupies a
unique position. Just like Sofia Loren or Roberto Baggio, its products have
their country of origin running through their very DNA. And surely that can
only be a very good thing, or can it?
Sonus
Faber Venere 2.5 Loudspeaker System
Of course, culture plays a part, but
another vital defining characteristic of any company is who runs it, and indeed
how it is run. Sonus Faber isn’t one of those ‘committee’ type companies, doing
bland, lowest-common-denominator stuff. It’s fair to say its loudspeakers are
voiced in a particular way and with a distinctive sound, one that won’t appeal
to all. Things could only be this way, when the founder Franco Serblin is still
the chief designer for the company. Just as the company name suggests, all his
speakers deliver a ‘handcrafted sound’, something that could only be the
product of skilled people with decades of experience.
Rather than buying in proprietary drivers,
Sonus Faber has always paid special attention to the drive units – whose
importance in the overall sonic scheme of things is often as understated as it
is misunderstood. Bespoke drivers also allow the designer to follow the ‘less
is more’ school of crossover design too (most Sf models have a simple first
order design), saving a good deal of money to put into doing the best cabinet
possible.
The
Venere 2.5 is, as the name suggests, a two-and-a-half way design…
The Venere 2.5 is – as its name suggests –
a 2.5 way floor standing speaker, sporting a shape which is said to be homage
to its ‘mother’ speaker the Aida. Considering its $3,000 price tag, you just
can’t help wondering how on earth the company managed to achiever such high
levels of build and finish. This price point is a distinctly tricky niche for a
big floor stander, as the larger a loudspeaker gets (and the Venere 2.5 isn’t
small at 1,107x340x437mm) the harder (and more expensive) it is to control.
Think of standmounter as a nimble little
Mini (the real one, not the modern genetically modified mutant) able to change
direction at the blink of an eye and then imagine trying to do the same thing
in a big Bentley, with all that weight wallowing around. Speakers are the same,
inasmuch as the bigger they are, the harder it is to get a grip on the physics.
Floor standers have long cabinets which can variously flex and/or store
unwanted mechanical energy like a capacitor does current. Dealing with this
takes careful design, something that’s simply not a problem with a small
standmount speaker.
The profile of this box is shaped like a
Lyre, which the manufacturer claims ensures structural strength and control of
spurious resonance. While this is true to a large extend, I have to say it was
still slightly lively or to be more accurate ‘undead’/ but then the same can be
said for many $7,500 floor standers, and it’s only when you get to the likes of
B&W’s $15,000 801Ds that the cabinet seems to be hewn from rock that
reaches down to very center of the earth itself. So we’ll say the Venere 2.5
passes to knuckle-rap test very comfortably, given its size and price.
Like Sofia Loren or Roberto Baggio,
Sonus Faber’s country of origin is in its DNA
The piano gloss lacquer finish is
superlative at its price. There is little sense of this speaker being the poor
relation to the marque’s higher end offerings, despite being made in China.
Indeed Sones Faber has worked very closely with its far eastern partner,
training its people at the Arcugnano head office in Italy, with Italian
technicians and carpenters working in China too. The result is a beautiful
design by Paolo Tezzon and Livio Cucuzza (engineer and stylist respectively).
Made to very high standards yet sold at a price that’s considerably less than
would otherwise have been possible closer to home.
Tempered
glass is set into the base and top, and the speaker sports adjustable aluminum
feet
So, the Venere 2.5 gets off to a good start
in life, with a beautifully finished yet very substantial and ‘quiet’ cabinet,
into which some high quality Sonus Faber-designed drivers are bolted. The
treble unit is a 29mm German DKM silk dome with no ferrofluid, claimed to go
from 25 kHz up top, down to 2,500Hz whereupon a 180mm driver with a composite
plastic Curv cone takes care of the midrange duties. It then passes the baton
to another similar driver that goes from 250Hz down to a claimed 45Hz. These
are set into a curved, inclined baffle with the bass driver loaded by a reflex
port on the front. Tempered glass is set into the base and top, and the speaker
sports adjustable aluminum feet.
The overall package really is quite superb
– you can’t help feeling you get an awful lot of speaker for your money,
something that looks three times its price. It sat very happily in my largish
listening room, its shiny surfaces glinting in the daylight.
