'When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie...' I love
Things Italian, from my buzzy little Fiat Uno to Tameo models to
Borsalino hats, spumoni to Sabrina's cantileverage. Dunno why; my
sense of 'style' was never pronounced and (visual) aesthetics is
not an overriding preoccupation. It's just that the Italians,
from Bugatti to Giugiaro, always seem to get it right.

Aside from a reputation for automotive unreliability rivalled
only by Great Britain, Italy is regarded as a nation of
craftsmen. It was only a matter of time before one of them turned
to audio equipment, not counting those weird Galactron goodies of
yore, and I couldn't wait to see what the children of Leonardo
and Cellini and Michaelangelo would do with aluminium faceplates
and/or wooden boxes. My first taste of Italian audio cuisine was
the Sonus Faber Electa loudspeaker and I was not disappointed.

What knocked me out was the Electa's panache, the way it balanced
every aspect of speaker performance in the same way that it
addressed the speaker's physical presentation. The latter is so
remarkable that the Electa's beautiful cabinetry overshadows its
actual performance, the mouthwatering visuals being so striking
that most Electas are probably sold on looks alone. Fortunately,
the sounds delivered by what is, in reductio, nothing more than a
fairly small two-way box are so utterly musical that any inherent
weaknesses are rendered insignificant by its overall 'whole'. In
other words, it's not just a pretty face.

Remember that the Electa, despite some minor chestiness and a
rather brutal way of showing up the partnering power amplifiers,
has the capability to swing with the music, to respond to the
power of the music without breaking up (or breaking down) and it
can deliver the high levels and a huge soundstage which belie its
size. It is to other high-priced mini-monitors what Italian
supercars are to German supercars. The former have soul, the
latter have technical brilliance. And given the choice, I'd
always opt for James Brown over James Last.

With this in mind, what on earth could Sonus Faber possibly offer
with the Electa Amator? It differs mainly in details, the most
obvious being its cabinet profile, with sloped rear baffle and
rear- rather than forward-firing port. The enclosure size of the
Amator is 220x370x350 WHD to the Electa's 240x380x270 WHD,
narrower, slightly shorter but a fair bit deeper. What gives away
the identity of the dearer model is the sculpting around the
mid/bass driver, which is too wide for the narrower baffle of the
Amator.

In order to keep the Sonus Faber 'look' of curved edges, while at
the same time trying to accommodate the 180mm driver as used in
the Electa, the company cooked up some amazing woodworking
techniques which curve the cabinet sides around the edges of the
driver. The result is a cabinet which bulges a third of the way
up, and the grille frame has been shaped to compensate for this
styling fillip. Under the grille, it's the same leather-clad
baffle, but now the speakers are arrayed vertically instead of
offset. This is possible partly because of the relegation of the
port to the rear and also by cutting away (as per the Electa) a
fair portion of the 28mm tweeter's surround plate to allow for
close coupling of the woofer to the tweeter. Given the two
drivers used by Sonus Faber for this design, there's no way to
set the centres of the drivers any closer together unless they
suddenly merge to become a coaxial.

Although the drivers have the same dimensions and near-identical
appearance as those used in the Electa, they differ in a number
of ways. The mid/bass drivers' cones have been treated with a
carbon/acrylate coating to decrease resonance and improve
linearity, and the drivers are matched in pairs to ridiculously
close tolerances at the factory. For the upper frequencies, Sonus
Faber has unearthed a new, special driver dubbed the T330D
Esotar, originally created by Dynaudio for the professional
market. This 28mm dome tweeter is built to zero-tolerance and
costs Sonus Faber L.1,000,000 per pair, or roughly #480 at
today's exchange rates, just for the tweeters. The speakers
arrive with a protective wire construct in front of the tweeter
which can be removed for those prepared to eliminate this
insurance policy in favour of slight sonic gains.

As with the Electa, the Amator is supplied ready for bi-wiring,
with easily-removed gold-plated links connecting the four gold
five-way binding posts. As before, the owner is treated to solid
Brazilian hardwood and Italian walnut, handcrafted to form an
aesthetically pleasing, non-resonant cabinet weighing 15kg; it
smacks of fine furniture as much as it does of hi-fi. Sensitivity
is high at 88dB for 1W at 1m, and the company recommends
amplifiers in the 30-200W range. Sonus Faber specifies the
frequency response as 45-30kHz, +/-3.0dB, and the impedance is a
safe 8 ohms. But don't think for one minute that this speaker
will work will with mid-fi amplification.

Considering the hefty price tag of #2250, I had no qualms about
auditioning the Amators solely with high-end products. Front ends
consisted of the Oracle Delphi Mk III and SME Series V tonearm
with Audio-Technica AT-ART1 and Ken Chan Koetsu cartridges, the
CAL Tempest SE CD and Marantz CD-12 players, the Audio Research
SP-9 and SP-14 preamps and Aragon 4004, Radford MA50 and Beard
P100 monoblock amplifiers. Wires included Master Link and MAS
speaker cables, Lieder cables, as well as Mandrake and
YFERE/YBLENT interconnects. The speakers were auditioned in a
room large enough and dead enough to eliminate room acoustics as
a variable. I sited the Sonus Fabers on Partington Dreadnought II
stands, with Blu-tack above and spikes below.

Aging gracelessly, I'm becoming more and more stubborn about the
music to which I subject myself for at least 40 hours per week.
Even so, I forsook the soul music long enough to try the Amators
with as many genres as I could, beginning with a frighteningly
lifelike recording of the harpsichord (yes, sceptics, I have
heard one up close), Michel Keiner's performance of Bach's
Goldberg Variations on Associations Cercle Kallistos CK 1004.
(This is a limited edition LP recorded with purist techniques, in
collaboration with YBA of France.) Along with one or two
Sheffield Lab releases, it's one of the best 'lone instrument'
recordings I've ever heard, even if it does make me want to don a
powdered wig. What it showed about the 'super' tweeter in the
Amator is that the dearer speaker is even faster and cleaner than
the Electa, and that its top end transparency with the grille in
situ matches the Electa with the grille removed.

The 'speed' of this speaker is its most remarkable strength
relative to the dearer model, although the gains in bass
performance were as I expected. Everything that should sound
crisp has clean, smear-free edges to the notes, and the
percussive aspects of that venerable keyboard were not
compromised in the least. Moving to acoustic guitar recordings
showed the same strengths, with the added attraction of rich
woody resonances, while a capella (the King's Singers in
particular) showed an almost complete removal of the chestiness
noted with the smaller Sonus Fabers.

Speaking of 'smaller', the dearer model's slimmer baffle resulted
in even better imaging capability, especially in terms of image
specificity. The lessening of reflections by shrinking the baffle
is a well-known practice; with the Amator, it means that the
Sonus system more closely approximates a point source than does
its predecessors, and in this respect it seemed more like the
dream I've harboured for so long: an LS3/5A with testicular
fortitude.

What both the Amator and the less expensive Electa offer over all
other quality mini-monitors -- besides the finest cabinetry ever
seen on a hi-fi product -- is the ability to go loud, to rock
hard and to convey power without the listener ever knowing that
the speaker is no bigger than the monitor on a PC. The LS3/5A --
even the new, improved version -- can't take the hammering you
can dish out to the Sonus Fabers, always sounding like it's going
to explode at any minute, while the SL700 simply gives up when
driven to hard, sounding almost like a valve amp that's been
asked to do too much. As for the WATT, well, I've already written
many a word about how it's more of a reviewer's tool than a hi-fi
product, so the comparisons aren't worthwhile until I try the Mk
II, which is a far more 'universal' product. But for playback
levels and sheer dynamics, the Amator is now the one to beat.

Ask any audiophile, though, what he or she wants out of a small
loudspeaker and they'll say 'bass' before they say 'level' or
'dynamics'. The Electa is good enough to satisfy all but those
who were weaned on IMFs or big Infinity systems; the Amator's
extra 5Hz is enough to offer a perceptible gain in 'weight' on
the kind of material able to inspire it. With Bang, Baroom and
Harp, it was possible to fool yourself into thinking that here
was a speaker standing a lot taller than Danny Devito, with
woofers the size of dinner plates. The long throw of the woofer,
the tuned port, the stone-dead cabinet and 400 watts' worth of
Aragon or Beard power all combined to make the Amator the
ultimate choice for the space-shy, bass-hungry audiophile
(Well-Heeled Div.).

If there are grounds for complaint, it's only when you audition
these side by side with some monster system like Divas, with
seemingly infinite bass extension, or the WATTs themselves, which
have yet to be matched, in my experience, for sheer precision in
terms of image-shaping. The transparency, probably the best I've
heard from a box with cones and domes, is exceeded by planar
systems, but they are, invariably, more space-consuming, even if
the footprint is tiny (eg Martin-Logan Sequels). So, forgetting
about the non-box alternatives, we're left with what I think is
simply the best all-round small box currently available,
regardless of price. I can think of panel systems I'd prefer at
the price or less, but no panel can sneak past the house-proud
spouse the way this little beauty can. It's almost criminal that
something this pretty can be this wonderful. I hate to put it in
such a sexist manner, but I think I've found the hi-fi equivalent
of a bimbo with brains. And I love it.