Anyone familiar with Sonus faber will love the superlative
craftsmanship of the Vicenza- based company’s loudspeakers. Although pretty
much all high-end designs are extremely well turned out these days, this
Italian company remains on another level – producing speakers that resemble art
pieces, rather than just big boxes trying to look expensive.
For a while, some thought that the brand had become too
synonymous with visually arresting designs – almost acquiring the sense that
form overrode function. In recent years however, the sonic performance bar of
Sonus faber loudspeakers has been raised significantly, and they’re right there
in the fray – fighting it out with the very best of the rest...
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| Sonus faber Serafino Tradition |
LA BELLA FIGURA It is loudspeakers such as the Serafino that
carry this solemn responsibility. Its name literally translates as ‘seraph’ in English
– a celestial or heavenly being. Costing a whisker under £18,000 per pair, it’s
a beautiful high-end product for which no excuses need be made, the very embodiment
of the Italian aesthetic of la bella figura.
The woodwork is flawless, with deep colour, superb texture
and an immaculate lacquer surfacing. Reminiscent of a luxury yacht’s exquisite
wooden hull, there’s a choice of Wengè finish with maple inlays, and a Red
finish. This counterpoints with brushed aluminium in a choice of titanium or
black finishes respectively, with Sonus faber’s traditional front baffle
finished in coffee or black leather.
The Serafino may look like a slightly smaller version of the
Amati Tradition [HFN Oct ’17] but in the flesh it still feels big, and it’s
soon obvious that a lot of work has gone into its design. A large 3.5-way system,
it is said to be a full para-aperiodic vented box and has a striking rear end treatment
– the back panel is an aluminium extrusion that forms both part of the speaker’s
exoskeleton, and also part of its so-called Stealth Ultraflex system where the port
ducts are lined to reduce turbulence.
The drive units are all Sonus faber’s own of course, the
tweeter being the H28 XTR-04, which many audiophiles will surely know is a 28mm
silk dome, complete with a natural wood ‘acoustic labyrinth’ rear chamber. This
crosses over to the M15 XTR-04 midrange unit at 2.5kHz – this being a 150mm
diameter design complete with neodymium magnet system. At 250Hz the first of
two Sonus faber W18XTR-08 woofers pitches in, both with 180mm cones made from a
syntactic foam core between external surface skins of cellulose pulp. At 80Hz,
the second joins the party.
As it’s such a sizeable thing, you might expect the Serafino
to be fairly efficient, and the manufacturer does indeed claim a sensitivity of
90dB that was largely met in our tests [see Lab Report, p65]. Alongside its
350W power handling rating, the speaker is obviously designed to go very loud.
So while you’ll need a large-ish listening room for these 52kg cabinets it’s worth
knowing that their bass is readily ‘tuneable’ by positioning.
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| Sonus faber Serafino Tradition |
BRISTLING WITH DETAIL From the moment you fire up this loudspeaker, it’s clear that you’re listening to something special. It simply does not sound like most examples of the breed, regardless of size or price. There’s a certain vibrancy that makes pretty much any type of music you play through it unerringly good fun. Recordings feel alive, bristling with detail and nuance – with the Serafino, Sonus faber appears to have mastered the secret of making highly transparent loudspeakers that are nonetheless extremely musically engaging. It is powerful, shows great poise, and yet is also the life and soul of the party. This isn’t the most common of combinations, as many will know.
ROCK-SOLID For example, feed it a clean slice of well-recorded
classic pop music, such as Malcolm McLaren’s ‘House Of The Blue Danube’ [from Waltz
Darling; Epic 460736 2], and one is instantly struck by the physicality of the loudspeaker.
It is not one of the largest I’ve encountered, yet it appears to be able to
shift vast amounts of air with utter ease. The song’s thumping electronic bass
line – beautifully syncopated with snare drums and hi-hats from the drum machine
– proved a joy to listen to. This speaker is able to excavate from deep down
low and pound out huge amounts of low frequency information. Yet it remains
rock-solid, as if the drive units were set into the cliff face of some windswept
coastal cove!
Life is made all the more fun by the Serafino’s excellent,
lens-like midband, highly focused and detailed yet delicate. It doesn’t assault
the listener with midrange detail, rather it dissolves and lets the recording
speak for itself. This classic ’80s Trevor Horn production sounded really pacy,
and with a lovely lustre and sparkle to the proceedings. Swap to more modern electro
from Gorillaz’ ‘Clint Eastwood’ [from G Sides; Parlophone TOCP-65932] and the
same attributes shine through. This recording is dramatically different, instantly
showing how dated the previous one is, yet the Serafino works the same magic.
It lets the listener right into the mix, where he or she can delight in what’s
going on with heady abandon. The infectious way that it handles rhythms, down
to its great transient speed, makes it all the more seductive – as does the
great thump from the bass drivers when, and only when, it is called for. So the
Serafino is something of a gentle giant for despite being ‘big boned’, it’s
supple and agile too. The midband isn’t just excellent in two dimensions; this
loudspeaker images extremely well in three! Grant Green’s ‘Ease Back’ [from
Carryin’ On; Blue Note CDP 7243 8 31247 2 5] is a beautiful slice of late ’60s
jazz, with strong funk overtones. All Blue Note releases from that period seem
to have superb stereo soundstages, and this is no exception.
LIKE BEING THERE Through the Serafino it was writ large in the
air of the listening room, seemingly escaping through its boundary walls. The great
midband focus really helped here, locating instruments accurately in space. The
music sounded wonderfully vibrant, funky and full sized – the recorded acoustic
was really well carried. Even at lowish volumes, the Serafino conjured up a
really believable sense of being there at the time of the recording, immersing you
in the atmosphere of a great musical event. Aside from the quality of its drive
units and the relative ‘silence’ of its cabinet, I think the tweeter’s open,
extended and spacious sound really helped out in this instance.
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| Sonus faber Serafino Tradition |
This loudspeaker’s true quality is most apparent with classical music. The opening movement of Mahler’s Symphony No 9 [LSO/Valery Gergiev; LSO Live LSO0730] showed the Serafino’s sublimely textured string sound playing with vibrant woodwind and brass. Most striking of all, though, was the marvellously three-dimensional recorded acoustic and pinpoint imaging. All this time, the music was lilting and melodic, yet could really jump up and bite you with its dynamic power. Only when you put it up against the very finest speakers can criticism be levelled at the Serafino, and even here designs that do better in one respect may be inferior in others.
So, with 4hero’s ‘Give In’ [from Play With The Changes; Raw
Canvas Records RCRCD02] I did find the tweeter sounding just a little
‘tinselly’ – just failing to achieve that ultraquiet, fade
back-into-nothingness sort of sound that you get, for example, from a top
ribbon design. And yet the better the recording, the more this loudspeaker
rises to the occasion. And partnered with the finest ancillaries it is capable
of spectacular results.
THAT NTH DEGREE It’s the last few percent of the recording
that it captures so well. Lesser speakers may give a good account of this, yet
the Serafino Tradition goes right in and gets the last nth degree of detail
out. At the same time, it keeps the music lilting and melodic – so I loved the
superb string timbres and tone (always a Sonus faber speciality) in the Mahler,
the delightful handling of the flute trills and the great sense of all component
parts of the orchestra playing together in the Barbican Hall in 2011. There’s
so much right with this speaker that is almost churlish to complain, and if you
want a really capable big box that covers all the bases, there’s little to
compare
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