Speaker Asylum: REVIEW: Sonus Faber Amati Homage Speakers by Chris Wynn General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

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The Sonus Faber Amati Homage is to speakers, what Rolls Royce is to cars. These speakers were designed as statement pieces, as cost-no-object, ultra-refined works of art. For such stupendously engineered products, listening to the speakers left me wondering whether or not strict accuracy and neutrality had been sacrificed for something more luxurious, more “sculpted,” if you will, but at the same time more artificial.

The Amati Homage design utilizes Scan-speak’s top of the line (and ultra-expensive) Revelator tweeter. As the Amati Homage is my only reference for the Revelator, I am not sure how much of the unique treble signature of this speaker was due to the tweeter itself or its application in the Amati design. In any case the Revelator is capable of great delicacy and a rare ability to render very fine shades of treble “color” that most other tweeters simply gloss over. The Revelator’s treble possesses a liquid, pellucid quality that makes most other tweeters sound hard and mechanical. The Revelator creates treble colors in delicate, water color-like shades, which is both a great strength and a weakness, because the Revelator’s treble (while delicate and refined) ends up sounding tonally bleached in comparison to bolder, more forthright, and brighter tweeters. There were times while listening to the Amati Homages, in which my ears strained to hear familiar treble detail in my test recordings. The detail was there, but it was much fainter and more restrained than I believe is ideal.

The Amatis possess a transparent and laid-back sounding mid-range. Nothing stood out, nothing offended, but the overall sound lacked the last ounce of drama and involvement that bolder sounding speakers are capable of creating. The subtle bleaching detected in the treble extended down into the upper mid-range. I would characterize this as a very, very minor departure from ideal, but the significantly subdued output in the lower mid-range sounded more problematic. The suckout that I detected in this region left the overall sound somewhat thin and undernourished. Cellos, male speaking voices, and other sounds in this region lacked an accurate sense of depth, weight, and richness.

Ironically, this lack of mid-range “depth” seemed to enhance the sense of mid-range “clarity.” I attributed these mid-range characteristics to a deliberate “voicing” of the sound of the Amatis, as I have heard the same quality with many European-designed speakers. This characteristic “voicing” is not quite accurate in my opinion, but may be better suited to smaller-scale European listening rooms than their larger America counterparts.

The Amatis bass performance on audition sounded problematic, but I attribute this to the room and not to the speakers. The Amatis overexcited a room mode at around 100 Hz while lower bass output fell off rapidly. The boom created was annoying but failed to obscure the delicacy and clarity of the speaker’s mid and treble performance. I expect that careful experimentation with placement can solve this problem.

I believe that the voicing of the Amati Homage departs too far from strictly neutral and places constraints on the size and type of room that you can place the speaker in. While possessing a delicately resolved treble, and a subtle and transparent midrange, the Amatis lack depth and can struggle to fill large spaces. The speakers suffer from a subtle bleaching that tends to reduce the sense of listener involvement with the music being reproduced. The Amatis could do with an injection of excitement. Moreover, soundstage images are placed with good, though not great precision within a wide soundstage, which lacks the depth of the very best. Finally, the bass quality of the Amatis seems unusually room dependent, so be prepared to spend time experimenting with placement (be careful though, because the speakers are very heavy).

As far as price-no-object statements go, the Sonus Faber Amati Homage loudspeakers are exceptionally refined. Are they fabulous? Are they gorgeous? Yes. Are they worth the expense? Depends on whether or not you have the time and patience to tweak them to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses.

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