Sonus Faber Concerto Review

Has your search for a modest speaker ended?

Original product details

• Description: Compact loudspeaker system
• Dimensions (W × H × D): 225 × 340 × 360 mm
• Weight: 22 kg packed
• Original US retail price (1998): $1,850 per pair in walnut; $2,100 per pair in piano black; $450 for Fixed Type stands
• US importer at publication: Sumiko

Leave it to the Italians to design a loudspeaker that makes the most of the human voice. Whether it’s Celine Dion singing “My Heart Will Go On,” the love theme from Titanic (Epic BK 68861), Bryn Terfel singing “O Rudder Than the Cherry” (Acis and Galatea) from his CD of Handel Arias (DG 453 480-2), or Diamond Rio singing “Beauty and the Beast” from The Best of Country Sing the Best of Disney (Walt Disney Records 60902-7), you will find yourself caught up in the sound. No, the Sonus Faber Concerto does not take a back seat to any speaker in providing the most enjoyable reproduction of the human voice. Nor is the Concerto a speaker that only benefits the critical reproduction of the voice!

Vital statistics

If you are familiar with any of the Sonus Faber speakers, you know that unlike most speaker manufacturers, Sonus Faber does not go to extraordinary lengths to kill cabinet resonances using various damping materials. Instead they view the cabinet as something of a musical instrument and, as in the design and construction of, for example, a violin, attempt to “tune” the speaker cabinet to contribute to the overall performance of the particular loudspeaker system. Such is the case with the Concerto!

The Concerto, imported and distributed in the United States by Sumiko, is a compact, reflex-loaded loudspeaker design with an internal volume of 15 liters. It uses two drivers: a 180 mm Scanspeak-Vifa mid/woofer with a shielded cellulose carbonium cone, and a SEAS 20 mm silk dome, ferrofluid tweeter. Unlike the stock drivers, they are made to Sonus Faber’s specifications. The same drivers are used in the Concerto Grand Piano, Sonus Faber’s more expensive floor-standing loudspeaker system. The system has a moderate efficiency of 87 dB at one watt with a power handling capacity of 30–200 watts, but the impedance response doesn’t go below 6 ohms at the frequency extremes making it an easy load for most amplifiers. The stated frequency response is 45–20,000 Hz ±2 dB. The Concerto has a nominal impedance of 8 ohms and uses a first-order crossover (of 6 dB per octave). Many designers feel that a first-order crossover provides the least problem with phase anomalies.

I experienced no noticeable breakup or clipping using, at one time or another, three different amplifiers of modest power: the Vaic 52 BX SE Monoblocks, using the new KR Enterprise Super 300B output tube with an estimated output of 30–40 watts; the KR Enterprise VT 600 Stereo Integrated SE amplifier (with Vacuum Transistor output devices) providing 25 RMS watts per channel; and the KR Enterprise SE VT 800 MK monoblocks (a configuration of two Vacuum Transistor output devices in parallel per channel) with a nominal 80 watts per channel.

The Concerto cabinet, of solid walnut and leather, is available with matching stands. And, as the manufacturer noted at the time:

The choice of woods for the construction of the acoustic chamber therefore becomes an aspect of major importance for the tone-colour….The cabinet is then assembled according to our own method which consists of bonding together a number of staves [of solid walnut] for the construction of the sides. This method has the advantage of damping the cabinet and considerably reducing resonances. The front panels are made of an amorphous material covered with leather…giving a pneumatic seal and damping any spurious vibration. The panels are also “anatomically” joined to the cabinet to give the least possible diffraction.

The beautifully finished walnut side panels and the leather surround can be stylistically pleasing depending on your aesthetic views.

The setup

The Owner’s Manual gives explicit instructions on speaker setup graphically depicting the effects on frequency response of speaker positioning in the room as well as the height of the speakers relative to the listener’s ears. I read the instructions some time after I had completed my placement of the speakers. Eureka, my ears were in sync with the recommendations!

My listening room is also my living room and in order to maintain domestic tranquillity, very little can be done to treat the room acoustically. Fortunately, the acoustics of the room are excellent. The room is relatively large, 25 feet wide by 15 feet long, with a cathedral ceiling; at the apex it is 9 feet high and 5 feet 10 inches at either end. I mention this because the compact Concerto must fill a large room with sound. The room does have two problems; it is very lively and there is a grand piano at one end. To deal with these problems, I position speakers well into the room and I listen in the near field to eliminate excessive reflections as much as possible.

Most of my listening was done with the following equipment (the amplifiers were previously listed):

• Sony S 7000 DVD Player as CD transport
• Muse Tex Bidat D/A Converter
• Balanced Audio Technology P-10 Phono Stage
• Placette Line Stage Preamp
• Linn Sondek LP 12/Lingo with Mod Squad modified Ittok Arm
• Lyra Clavis Da Capo cartridge

Since the Bidat D/A converter has its own wired, remote gain control, the CD source was connected directly to the amplifiers.

The sound

Over the years I have found much to admire in Sonus Faber speakers particularly because they always seem to get the midrange right. The presentation of the midrange is neither too forward nor laid back and it has presence. As I played through many of my LPs and CDs, it quickly became apparent that, though the Concerto is the second lowest priced system in the range, the quality of the midrange is no less impressive than that of the Extrema—Sonus Faber’s $10,000 loudspeaker at the time.

Lately I have spent time listening to some very fine systems, systems that rival anything I have heard, with speakers considered to be among the best available. With the audio encounter still fresh in my mind, I listened to some of the same CDs on the Concerto. And the experience is always the same; I find myself so caught up in the music that I sometimes forget to evaluate some of the differences I hear. But the music is what it is all about and the Concerto is remarkably musical.

I am not one of the audiophiles that concentrates only on disks that provide an audio experience. Yes, I do play certain recordings that reveal strengths and weaknesses in my equipment. But most of my listening is for the enjoyment of the music, whether it’s a recording from the ’30s of Sinatra singing with Tommy Dorsey, a recording from 1994 of Seal singing “Don’t Cry,” a new recording of Puccini arias sung by the new tenor José Cura, or the exciting 1959 performance on Mercury of Stravinsky’s The Firebird, with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Antal Dorati.

So, how did the Concerto fare compared to some of the other fine systems? I listened to many recordings over the months but a couple of selections should help to characterize the sound. “When I Fall in Love,” from the CD of Keith Jarrett at the Blue Note (ECM 1577), is a piece with well recorded piano and percussion, a good cut for determining the system’s resolution. In my view, a well recorded piano can tell you more about your system than perhaps any other single instrument. The percussion, particularly the cymbals on this recording, has a you-are-there quality when well reproduced. The Concerto showed that it is capable of excellent resolution: the delicacy of the cymbals, the clarity of the hammers hitting the strings of the piano.

Two anthems by John Rutter, “Lord, Make Me an Instrument of Thy Peace” and “A Gaelic Blessing” (Reference Recordings RR-57CD) made it clear that the Concerto is able to render a deep, wide soundstage. The choral voices were clearly defined across the stage; the speakers disappeared completely, the purity and sweetness of the voices were evident.

To conclude with the observation that these speakers are exceptionally musical is to give the Concerto’s overall exceptional performance short shrift. Certainly, the critical area of reproduction for any speaker system is the midrange, where most of what we hear in music is reproduced and where the Concerto cedes nothing to its competition. I know of no other $2,000 speaker system that gets so much so right! I have listened to some excellent speaker systems in the $4,500–$12,500 range, including my own reference speakers. The Concerto competes favorably in resolution, neutrality, transparency and purity. The speakers leave little to be desired with the possible exception of the bottom two octaves. For those of you that require the lowest bass, you can add a subwoofer such as the Sunfire or Sumiko’s REL—then approximately $1,200—for a total historical outlay of $3,200. You will, in my view, find nothing in that price range to beat it.

Associated equipment

• KR Enterprise VT 800 MK Vacuum Transistor
• BAT VK-P10 Balanced Phono Stage
• Muse Tex Bidat Digital Processor
• Sony S/7000 DVD Player as Disc Transport
• KR Enterprise VT 600 KS Vacuum Transistor Stereo Integrated Amplifier
• KR Enterprise (Vaic) High End Model 52BX (SE) monoblock amplifiers
• KR Enterprise (Vaic) High End Model 30B (SE) monoblock amplifiers
• Source Components Electronic Harmonic Recovery System
• Verity Audio Parsifal Speaker System
• Croft OTL monoblock amplifiers
• Croft Dual-Mono preamp
• Linn-Sondek LP 12, Lingo, Ittok tonearm (modified by Mod Squad)
• Lyra Clavis Da Capo MC cartridge
• Revox B77 reel-to-reel tape recorder
• Kenwood KT-917 Stereo Tuner
• Nakamichi 582 Stereo Cassette
• Purist Audio Design Maximus and HDI interconnects, Digital Link, and unnamed new flat-design speaker cables
• Discovery interconnects
• Black Diamond Racing Cones
• Various accessories