Sonus faber Grand Piano Domus

By Michael Jones

February 2006

Sonus faber Grand Piano Domus loudspeakers. $7000.

The love of music is universal and the idea to reproduce recorded music worldwide. Yet until some twenty years ago, most of the hi-fi equipment available in each market originated within that country. (New Zealand, with its UK heritage, looked to the land of the pale white pom for much of its hi-fi).

Knowledge about different hi-fi brands was slowly becoming more widespread, at least among English-speaking countries. The common language allowed hi-fi magazines to travel, as slowly US brands became better known in the UK and vice versa.

But hi-fi manufacture was not confined to English speaking countries. Europe had a vibrant and active hi-fi scene, but the rest of the world knew little about it.

From Italy, with love

That began to change when a few brave distributors started handling a couple of “unknown” brands from Europe. One of the first European brands to gain some traction in the international marketplace was Italian loudspeaker manufacturer Sonus faber.

Sonus faber – “hand made sound” – have subsequently developed a reputation for both sound quality and craftsmanship.

It was way back in October 2002 that I reviewed the original Grand Piano loudspeakers from Sonus faber. At the time they were a bit of an aberration for this Italian firm. Sonus had concentrated on stand-mount loudspeakers, which is from where their fame developed. The original Grand Piano was a floor standing speaker.

I loved them – the originals were a speaker that I’d be happy to keep. So when the new range was announced I was immediately on the phone to the Sonus faber distributor. After a bit of a delay (supplies were short and the dealers had first dibs on them) a beautiful pair of speakers arrived at my home.

The same, but different

The Domus Grand Piano has many differences from the original model. The most obvious change is in the driver configurations. While the original was a two and a half way speaker, the Domus is a true three-way speaker.

All three drivers are custom made for Sonus faber by European driver manufacturers. The 25mm tweeter is a variation on the ring radiator tweeter successfully used by many other loudspeaker designers. Here it’s matched to a 150mm coated paper midrange and two 180mm coated paper cone woofers, loaded by a reflex port on the front baffle.

The finish is immaculate. The front baffle, top and rear are clad in leather, a Sonus faber tradition. The sides of the lute-shaped speaker are two separate pieces of would, decoupled from the main cabinet “for resonance control”. My pair came in a gorgeous black piano lacquer, with teak also available.

A fan writes

As a great fan of the earlier Grand Piano, I was really looking forward to hearing the new model. Unfortunately, I was greatly disappointed. One visitor summed it up as “nice and all that, but… yawn”.

This listener needs to say a bit more than that, but my comments are on the same lines. The word that kept coming to mind was “muted”. Dynamically – well, the Grand Piano wasn’t. It was as if the leading edges of notes had been smoothed over with some heavy duty sandpaper.

The Grand Piano was never unpleasant to listen to. It never spitted or snarled. But music was homogenised through these speakers. Differences between different CD masterings, for example, were – there’s that word again – muted. The resolution that I would expect from a $7000 speaker (and received from the earlier model) wasn’t there.

The bass went down and the treble went up, but I didn’t really care, much as i don't care to write much more about these speakers. Unlike the previous issue, where I plotted to keep the Image Revelations in my home for as long as possible, after the Grand Piano I was happy, and relieved, to go back to my old Epos ES14s.

Conclusion

The Grand Piano was a loudspeaker that I anticipated receiving with pleasure. However, that anticipation was not rewarded. A $7000 loudspeaker needs to perform much better than this.

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