Sonus Faber Amati Futura

[microstrip]

Just finished reading Jeff Frtzt comprehensive review of the Sonus Faber Amati Futura at UltraAudio.com
The comparison with the Q3 is particularly enlightening.

Thanks Jeff!

http://www.ultraaudio.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=225:embracing-old-and-new-sonus-faber-amati-futura-loudspeakers&catid=44:feature-articles&Itemid=37

 

[NorthStar]

WoW, did you see the graph for the measured frequency response!

Hey, thanx for the link Micro! :b
...And TY Jeff also for a splendid review of some splendid loudspeakers.

* These are my type of speakers fo sur!

 

[mep]

I call a review like that "damning with faint praise." Jeff clearly likes the V-3 better and thinks it's a much more neutral speaker and therefore more of a 'truth teller.'

 

[asiufy]

Used to have this speaker, actually, I got one of the first few pairs...
Have had lots of other Sonus Faber speakers before the Futura, but I was less than impressed with it.
My first pair came with a broken (stuck) woofer. The importer gave me a replacement, and that one too had a defective midrange driver that produced anomalous harmonics in the 270Hz area.
I believe cost cutting post-sale at Sonus Faber are the culprits. QC must be non-existent at this point, or maybe they just check that the speakers look good, never bothering to check the actual sound.
Needless to say, I dumped the brand altogether...
Oh, and to be more neutral than the SF you don't need a Magico

Alexandre

 

[NorthStar]

Thank you Alexandre (tu parles Francais?) for a very honest comment on Sonus Faber speakers.

Always searching for the truth ...

Bests,
Robert

 

[microstrip]

(...) I believe cost cutting post-sale at Sonus Faber are the culprits. QC must be non-existent at this point, or maybe they just check that the speakers look good, never bothering to check the actual sound.
Needless to say, I dumped the brand altogether...
Oh, and to be more neutral than the SF you don't need a Magico

Alexandre

You were really unlucky. I have owned many SF's, including the Stradivari, several friends have Amati's and never heard of any problem with quality control or reliability. Anyway, even Toyota and Mercedes had cases of punctual reliability issues, let us hope they solve it fast. As always, the unlucky few buyers that had problems will not forgive usually ...

It is known that SF are now expanding at an accelerated rate - if the process is not adequately managed the quality control can suffer. But considering that their fastest growing market is Japan, a country known for its exigence of quality, I thing they will need to keep the quality standards high.

IMHO, no speaker is neutral as they all sound very different. SFs were never considered on the neutral side, although many people found that the Stradivari broke the tradition and was much more neutral than previous designs, and created a trend in the group. It would be amusing to establish a neutrality ranking for some known speakers and compare the sound of the top ranking. Which is the more neutral?

 

[asiufy]

microstrip,

That's why I made sure to say that I've owned practically all of SF's previous line! Grand Piano to Cremona to Amati. All three speakers were fabulous, no problems whatsoever. And beside that, I have friends with Elipsas and Strads who are running flawlessly after many years.
My point was that, since being bought by the investment group, QC took a nose dive. It's no coincidence that the same group also bought AR, and the QC there is non-existant as well.
As I always said, nothing is perfect, because these things are made by humans, and we're all far from perfect My understanding is that SF is not the same as it used to be, and my anecdote hopes to prove that point.
I understand I wasn't very lucky at all, but you got to admit this sort of thing wouldn't have happened with the SF of old...
As far as "neutral" goes, that's a contentious issue. My Dynaudios are so much more neutral (and natural) than SF that it's actually puzzling. The C4, a speaker that costs half of what the Amati Futura costs, run circles around it in terms of natural presentation.


alexandre

 

[FrantzM]

Hi

I am with aisufy. SF is held in rather great esteem by the audiophile community. I find them very editing. They tend to add their own to the presentation. Consistently. Across the line. I was however told that the Aida is a different animal. I am waiting to hear some reports on it.
I also think highly of Dynaudio , a great speaker company which doesn't seem to garner the consistent praise lavished on some but regularly produces great speakers across the line.. The C4, in particular would shame many highly celebrated speakers costing much more ...
They were to produce a C7 which i think I heard briefly at a show, it was supposed to have powered woofers.. never came to production ...

 

[andromedaaudio]

Micro strip i suspect SF will replace the wilson

New owners /new designteam , and different designdirection for SF over the last years

" That's how Serblin's successful carrier started, that's how, created by him in 1980, legendary company Sonus Faber started to write its part in world's audio industry history. In February 2007 Franco sold his company to private Italian holding firm - Quadrivio SGR, same one that a year later bought audio industry legend, Audio Research."

 

[microstrip]

Hi

I am with aisufy. SF is held in rather great esteem by the audiophile community. I find them very editing. They tend to add their own to the presentation. Consistently. Across the line. I was however told that the Aida is a different animal. I am waiting to hear some reports on it.
I also think highly of Dynaudio , a great speaker company which doesn't seem to garner the consistent praise lavished on some but regularly produces great speakers across the line.. The C4, in particular would shame many highly celebrated speakers costing much more ...
They were to produce a C7 which i think I heard briefly at a show, it was supposed to have powered woofers.. never came to production ...

FrantzM,

Two brands I like a lot. However I lost contact with Dynaudio some years ago, and have no experience with the latest models, my impressions are based on older models. Although Dynaudio's could sound very good, most of their models could not play decently at low levels - you had to play them loud to energize the room. And their sound quality was strongly depended on electronics and cables - partnered with the wrong system they would sound mid-fi. As a good friend said, they only liked expensive electronics. IMHO, this was mainly due to their bass balance. Another aspect was that their lines sounded completely different - the Contour's were quite different from the Consequence's or the Confidence. The C4 you refer is not neutral in the bass - it shows a wide +5dB bump centered at 100Hz - very similar to the Sonus Faber Stradivari.

Although it is not the case of the Dynaudio's, I found that some of the speakers that claim to be completely neutral are just boring most of time.

I have a pair of Sonus Faber Amati Futura in my room (please do not tell Andromedaaudio ) today - more to follow.

 

[caesar]

FrantzM,

Two brands I like a lot. However I lost contact with Dynaudio some years ago, and have no experience with the latest models, my impressions are based on older models. Although Dynaudio's could sound very good, most of their models could not play decently at low levels - you had to play them loud to energize the room. And their sound quality was strongly depended on electronics and cables - partnered with the wrong system they would sound mid-fi. As a good friend said, they only liked expensive electronics. IMHO, this was mainly due to their bass balance. Another aspect was that their lines sounded completely different - the Contour's were quite different from the Consequence's or the Confidence. The C4 you refer is not neutral in the bass - it shows a wide +5dB bump centered at 100Hz - very similar to the Sonus Faber Stradivari.

Although it is not the case of the Dynaudio's, I found that some of the speakers that claim to be completely neutral are just boring most of time.

I have a pair of Sonus Faber Amati Futura in my room (please do not tell Andromedaaudio ) today - more to follow.

Looking forward to your comments and thoughts, Microstrip! You have had some killer gear come through your doors recently.

How big is your room, out of curiosity?

 

[microstrip]

(...)
How big is your room, out of curiosity?

4 x 9.3 x 2.4m . The front wall is heavily treated with RPG abbfusors and diffractals, as well as bass trap along the whole edge. Some flutterfree large panels are also helping. It was tuned for the SoundLab A1 PX's - when I use box speakers I must cover the corners abbfusors with polycylindrical diffusors. For box speakers I could add some bass trapping at the end of the room, around the large book-shelve.

The back of room doubles as my office, and is almost completely covered with a book-shelve filled with books. Large shelves with LPs and CDs (complete the acoustics).

The room is ground floor with easy access - no stairs at all, making it easy to enter and take any gear. And as some dealers refer, it sounds much better than it should!

 

[NorthStar]

I have a pair of Sonus Faber Amati Futura in my room (please do not tell Andromedaaudio ) today - more to follow.

Cool! :b ...Are they good?

 

[asiufy]

microstrip,

Before I jumped ship to Dynaudio, I tried to listen to as many different models as I could, and I could detect more similarities than differences between their various lines. I've heard the entry level Focus, Contour, Confidence as well as the Special 25 bookshelf. All of them were extremely natural in the midrange, with a very sweet top end, due to the silk dome tweeter.
Even the simplest setup I heard, Focus 220 with entry level Naim gear, sounded wonderful. That was the deal maker for me. If a much simpler setup than mine could play that well (played better than my setup with the Futuras), so I'd be in heaven with their top models, which I ended up getting (Dynaudio Temptation).
The C4 was indeed a very hard speaker to drive, so I can imagine it must be hard to get it to play nicely at lower levels, I'll give you that. I'd need more than the 160W on my Dartzeel. Now, the Temptation is another story altogether. No such problem, players extremely well at low volumes, with full body and complete detail retrieval.
I haven't tested that many cutting edge speakers, specially those that claim absolute neutrality, but it's been my impression with amps that, sometimes, too neutral = boring.
Oh, and I'm curious to hear what you thought of the Amati Futura!


alexandre