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Sonus faber Domus 5-channel Speaker System

Sonus faber Domus 5-channel Speaker System

Few loudspeaker companies are more intimately connected with high-end audio than Italy’s Sonus faber. Its aristocratic designs evoke the craftsmanship and the culture of the legendary Cremonese violin makers and a taste of la dolce vita. But there is another facet to the Sonus faber personality that is not immediately evident as you sip your espresso and admire the speakers’ lute-inspired woodwork, a facet summed up in the word Domus, Latin for house or home. Domus is Sonus faber’s latest collection of loudspeakers, which have been purposefully designed to fit any media habitat—a quality that should resonate with both music and home theater aficionados.

The Concerto Domus, a two-way, bass-reflex design, is the smaller of two floorstanders that the Domus series offers. Attention to detail is evident everywhere you look—for example, in the way that the tweeter nestles close to the mid-bass driver thanks to its scalloped mounting plate. The mid-bass driver features a vented phase plug design for low-compression performance. A heavy, crackle-finished steel pedestal bolts to the Concerto’s base for stability, while adjustable spikes tilt the Concerto back a few degrees for transducer time alignment. The Center Domus is a dual woofer, three-way center channel speaker that sports a 3.5- inch midrange unit, plus an integral mounting plinth. The Concertino Domus, in turn, is ideal for surround duty where a petite monopole is desired.

Sonus faber Domus 5-channel Speaker SystemThe voice of the Concerto Domus is expressive on macro and micro levels, and its seductive warmth is non-fatiguing across the octaves. The speaker’s generally well-controlled bass offers good pitch definition and confident extension down to the upper 30Hz range. There is, though, a mid-bass warmth region that, at its best, enriches acoustic bass lines, bassoons, and bass drums. The treble range, while not anvil flat owing to a shallow dip in the presence region, has an inherent sweetness that reflects the quality of the Concerto’s ring radiator tweeter. The most obvious beneficiaries are vocals of all stripes. For example, the deep sonorities of bass-baritone Bryn Terfel on “Shenandoah” [Sings Favourites: DG] are lush and expressive, while deep waves of energy from lower strings have cushion-like underpinnings that give the orchestra a much needed foundation. Soundstages are wide with better than average dimensionality, and the sweet spot invitingly large. Images and low-level details are cleanly drawn without artificially etched edges. During Jackson Browne’s “Color Of the Sun” [Greatest Hits: Asylum] there’s an alternating hi-hat figure that varies in intensity and character with each strike—a distinction the Concertos make clear, conjuring up the live listening experience.

Sonus faber Domus 5-channel Speaker SystemTopping my list impressions is the Concerto’s combination of midband dynamic liveliness and lower range oomph—muscular attributes I don’t normally associate with Sonus speakers. Whether it’s the propulsive kick drum intro of the Police’s “Murder By Numbers” [Synchronicity: A&M] or the bottomless, flat-pick electric bass of Mary Chapin-Carpenter’s “Stones in the Road” [Party Doll: Columbia], a bit of the beast hides beneath this system’s beauty. Fortunately, low-end gutsiness rarely interferes with the finer points of bass pitch and definition. Only near its prodigious limits does the Concerto give the sense that its reflex port is shouldering too much of the burden, making the bottom end sound somewhat under damped. There is also a slight softness on upper-midrange and lower-treble transients.

Two factors elevate the performance of the Domus multichannel system. The first is the performance of the Center Domus––home theater’s perennial beast of burden. Atypically, Sonus has added a midrange transducer to create a center channel that can master not only the dynamic demands of summer blockbusters, but also the delicate details of lowlevel dialogue or of solo violins. The Center Domus showed unflagging energy and dynamism in the face of the T-Rex tag-team ambush during King Kong––where the scale and weight of Kong’s labored breathing blew me back in my seat!

The second essential ingredient is the unified family voicing of the system, which empowers a soundfield to reproduce ambient cues while simultaneously reproducing a barrage of bullets from The Matrix, or the buttery smooth panning heard during a dynamite sequence early on in North Country. Continuity of voice is exceptionally important if you enjoy multichannel music, such as Elton John’s multichannel SACD remixes of Honky Chateau or Captain Fantastic, where surround channels not only provide ambience, but also the punctuated sounds of a mandolin, a horn section, or a vocal chorus. The fact is that our ears are keenly sensitive to whatever timbral discontinuities there might be in multichannel speaker systems—a problem that never arises with the Domus system because its elements speak with one common voice.

The Sonus faber Domus System combines refinement, evanescent musicality and excitement in equal measures— and a free-wheeling character that’s as much at home in the mosh pit as in the orchestra pit. Whatever theater of entertainment you choose, Sonus faber has designed the Domus to make you feel right at home—perhaps to never leave home.

Tags: SONUS FABER

Neil Gader

By Neil Gader

My love of music largely predates my enthusiasm for audio. I grew up Los Angeles in a house where music was constantly playing on the stereo (Altecs, if you’re interested). It ranged from my mom listening to hit Broadway musicals to my sister’s early Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Beatles, and Stones LPs, and dad’s constant companions, Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. With the British Invasion, I immediately picked up a guitar and took piano lessons and have been playing ever since. Following graduation from UCLA I became a writing member of the Lehman Engel’s BMI Musical Theater Workshops in New York–working in advertising to pay the bills. I’ve co-written bunches of songs, some published, some recorded. In 1995 I co-produced an award-winning short fiction movie that did well on the international film-festival circuit. I was introduced to Harry Pearson in the early 70s by a mutual friend. At that time Harry was still working full-time for Long Island’s Newsday even as he was writing Issue 1 of TAS during his off hours. We struck up a decades-long friendship that ultimately turned into a writing gig that has proved both stimulating and rewarding. In terms of music reproduction, I find myself listening more than ever for the “little” things. Low-level resolving power, dynamic gradients, shadings, timbral color and contrasts. Listening to a lot of vocals and solo piano has always helped me recalibrate and nail down what I’m hearing. Tonal neutrality and presence are important to me but small deviations are not disqualifying. But I am quite sensitive to treble over-reach, and find dry, hyper-detailed systems intriguing but inauthentic compared with the concert-going experience. For me, true musicality conveys the cozy warmth of a room with a fireplace not the icy cold of an igloo. Currently I split my time between Santa Fe, New Mexico and Studio City, California with my wife Judi Dickerson, an acting, voice, and dialect coach, along with border collies Ivy and Alfie.

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