I think I’m in love – the new Sonus faber Lumina Amator II – NZ$3500.
Since moving away from conventional retail to work-from-home, my office has become the centre of the Totally Wired operation. And as another winter closes in, I wanted to make it more of a refuge than a workspace. You’ll have your own room, work pattern and lifestyle but it’s always nice to have somewhere you can just shut the rest of the world out from for a while and enjoy music. It can be while you’re working, reading or taking a break. You can be happy in your solitude or enjoying the company of a pet, workmate or partner. Whatever the scenario, there’s a place for a small pair of speakers.
Enter the new Lumina Amator II ; a compact and affordable speaker that captures all that is good about Sonus faber. It’s the latest instalment in a line of individually remarkable speakers that began many years ago with the Electa Amator. ‘Amator’ translates from the Italian as ‘lover’ and this is an entirely accurate description – these are speakers to fall in love with; combine this with the ‘Lumina’ prefix and you will already have a good idea of what to expect.
‘This is my first experience with Sonus faber, and it won’t be the last. The Lumina II Amator is a gateway drug for sure. I can’t wait to try their other offerings. They receive my highest recommendation.’ hometheaterhifi.com
‘The Lumina II Amator might be one of Sonus Faber’s entry-level speakers, but from its look and sound, you wouldn’t know it.’ soundstagehifi.com
In a world of plastic the Lumina Amators stand out – the built by dedicated artisans in Vicenza, Italy, from natural materials and finished to a standard far beyond their affordable price point.
It’s taken many months from launch to the arrival here in New Zealand which is a reflection of both the popularity of this model and the measured pace at which Sonus faber work. But we have them here now and they are quite simply fantastic.
This is entirely consistent with our own long experience with Sonus faber – the first pair of original Concertinos we bought to Dunedin left an indelible impression; immediately outperforming similarly priced but larger speakers in both quality and room filling abilities. Two decades later the Sonus faber journey continues; from the entry level Lumina I, the new Lumina II Amator, the Duetto Active system, and Heritage series Minima Amator II and beyond.
All models share the essential Sonus faber character and craftsmanship so you’ll never feel short changed at any level. Which makes the ‘entry level’ Lumina Amators all the more remarkable.
‘You don’t need big speakers, you need good speakers.’
This is a quote from a review I found while waiting for the new Lumina’s to arrive. It’s all to easy to fall into the bigger is better mindset and Sonus faber themselves make plenty of larger speakers (including the Lumina Amator V) but for many rooms, a smaller speaker will be the best choice.
If you have been paying attention you’ll know that the Sonus Lumina range has been around for a couple of years – I like it a lot and review in depth here and here. While the Amator version could be considered the third iteration of the original Lumina I it’s not a replacement as Lumina I is still a core model in our range and the two speakers sit at different price points.
But the real development story is in one aspect of speaker design that is often overlooked; the crossover. The Lumina II Amator crossovers benefit directly from the development of the new Homage collection. Many of the solutions adopted on the new special models are derived from those of the Guarneri G5.
While you probably already know this, the crossover an electrical network built in to almost every speaker system that splits the signal going to each driver by frequency. Normally this is hidden within a speaker but Sonus faber are justifiably proud of their cross-over designs and in the case of the considerably more upmarket Maxima Amator the network is displayed.
While you can’t easily see the crossover within the Lumina Amator II, you can hear what it does.
To understand why the crossover is so important you have to go back to why we even use them.
Music spans a broad range of frequencies – not just the arbitrary human hearing range (20 Hz to 20,000 Hz) but well beyond with both deep bass and higher frequencies contributing. On a practical level it’s extremely difficult to reproduce this range with a single component (driver) and this is why almost all speakers have two or more drivers.
The cross-over splits the signal between the drivers. And this is where the fun starts. The incoming signal from most amplifiers is a potent mix of voltage and current (which is, by definition, wattage). So a crossover has to handle this and yet still pass the most delicate signal to the right driver. The more you learn about crossover design the more complex and nuanced the problems associated with it become and that’s well beyond the scope of what we can cover here.
But what you can see in the picture above is that the crossover components – capacitors, inductance coils and resistors are all substantial in order to be able to deal with power. The quality side is apparent if you can identify individual components and the complexity in the coil windings. How these components are connected and the interaction between them and the drivers is equal parts science and art.
What is important is what you hear. And this is where the new Lumina Amator II really delivers. I get to listen to a lot of speakers and other audio components. This has made me a demanding listener but also possibly a little jaded. Yet these new little speakers sing to me in a way that rekindles my enthusiasm.
Hand on heart, I can say that I’m hearing stuff from a modest little system that rivals considerably more costly components and this is directly attributable to these speakers. Being a smaller room, not a lot of power is needed to bring the listening levels up to where the sound is enjoyable and it’s obvious that the little Amators are easily driven so we can concentrate on quality. This isn’t to say they won’t spark up when we want to rattle the windows.
Transparency is a term that makes a lot of sense when you listen to the Amator IIs – it’s immediately apparent that they reveal both detail and layers of music that have been previously lost. This is something you’ll hear in your own system but it’s really just the start. The Amators are a speaker that you literally grow to love as they progressively reveal threads and patterns in music that drags you into performances in way that’s beyond analytical.
With any Sonus fabers there’s an experience in the ritual of the first unpacking; it’s part of the quality of the brand and this care is revealed with every model. The finish enhancements that set the Amator version about the standard Lumina models feed into this. But this love affair is about a lot more than first impressions.
It’s the long game…
These speakers get a lot better with time and that’s building on very good foundation. While many descriptions of speaker run in concentrate on the extension to the frequency extremes, it’s with the inner detail that the Amator IIs really find their feet. My own experience suggests that with these speakers, we are hearing not just the physical improvements from the drivers freeing up but also the maturation of the crossover components. The quality of these parts not only mean the initial performance is better, but that the improvements made over time are also greater. And this is a key point to note when reading any reviews. The relatively short time span allocated to any conventional speaker review will inevitably fail to do full justice to a speaker such as this Sonus faber. That’s why I’ve been spending A LOT of time listing to them and working with different source components to find out just how far we can go.
Even a relatively small and simple pair of speakers such as the Amator II’s are capable of stellar results if fed a better quality signal. This was made obvious when I stepped up the streaming source to the new Lumin T3X network player. It’s over three times more in cost than the speakers yet not only did it transform the already high level of quality, it re-affirmed the capability of these speakers.
There’s something really special about the Amator IIs – they are a reflection of all that Sonus faber stands for, distilled down to the essentials. So nothing gets in the way of the music. The longer you listen, the more you hear. This defies the normal logic of reviews which rely on analysis of specific qualities – Sonus faber understand that these qualities are interlinked and there’s room for almost infinite gradation, they genuinely paint a picture whereas it seems some speakers want to print a technical diagram.
The combination of quality, simplicity and subtlety means that the Amators will literally last a lifetime. This is why it’s worth stretching to get a speaker this good at the outset. Conversely this quality also means that if you are in a position to be building an entire system, the Amators will allow you to devote more to the electronics, safe in the knowledge that the speakers will allow them to really shine and ultimately end up with an even better system.
As we outlined at the outset of this review, Sonus faber offer you a veritable feast of choices when it comes to smaller speakers. So the question could be ‘which Sonus faber?’ The Lumina Amator II is a standout model even when compared to considerably more costly options and is equally worthy of the description; ‘speakers of beauty, honesty and integrity’. They are sophisticated, fun and very easy to live with. Isn’t it time you fell in love?
- Sonus faber Lumina Amator II speakers – NZ$3500 the pair – gloss wenge finish.
- Also in stock; Lumina IIs (walnut finish) $2900, Lumina I $2300.