In this week’s Hifi Meditations I wanted to share my thoughts and impressions on the new Sonus Faber Venere series of speakers, before I get started I feel that I need to be upfront and let you know that I have been incredibly excited about hearing these since I first heard about them. As some of you may know I am a Sonus Faber owner. In my home theater I am running the Grand Pianos, Solo and three Walls from the Home series. I have done my very best to be impartial and to be honest, and during my listening sessions I found myself constantly referring back to my system. I typically try to let a piece stand on its own merits and not hold it up to some other product. For example comparing the performance of a pair of $1000 speakers to a pair of $10,000 speakers in my mind isn’t fair. As they say, it is what it is, and I try to keep that in perspective. Due to my passion for Sonus Faber I decided to give myself a cool down period of a couple of weeks between my listening session and writing the review.
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The stunning Sonus Faber Venere 2.5
We set up the new Venere series of speakers in our multiuse home theater room. This room typically has 10 to 15 pairs of speakers from a number of manufacturers and several receivers and an amp in it. There isn’t a switching unit in the room so if you want to hear something different you do it the old fashion way and move your speaker wires and or speakers around. I like this as it removes a layer of electronics and I feel it gives a more honest representation of what the system will sound like in your home. For this listening session I connected the Sonus Faber Venere 2.5 towers, the Venere Center and a pair of the Venere 1.5 speakers acting as surrounds to an Anthem MRX700 receiver running it’s preouts to an Anthem MCA50. Speaker wire was a straight forward 14-2, nothings crazy or exotic.
I did not personally set up the speakers and things move around so much in this room that spending time to properly toe in and adjust a pair of speakers is usually a waste of time. Setup is usually quick and based upon experience with a particular manufacturer’s idiosyncrasy. Some speakers NEED to be toed in or raked severely to properly image, some need subtle adjustments to lock in and some you can randomly drop in a room and they sound great. I bring this up because as much as I love my home system I spent a good deal of time getting them to image well in my room. I went through the, tape a grid on the floor and listen to the same song over and over and move the speakers until it is perfect, routine to get things sounding great. When I sat down to listen I didn’t expect good imaging let alone great imaging. You can imagine my surprise when I popped in ”Too Much of Nothing” from the Peter, Paul and Mary Ten Years Together album and the imaging was spectacular! Peter and Paul were just to the outside of the speakers, it sounded like the bass player was behind and to the right of the drummer and there was a true sense of vertical space. It took me a long time to get that kind of imaging from my system, and I have heard other, much more expensive speakers image better, but the level of detail in space and openness of the image was stunning!
Moving on to other music, I thought I would see how the Veneres handled low frequencies, in went Paula Cole’s This Fire. The first cut starts out with Paula front and center and the Venere 2.5 made it seem as though Paula was singing right to me. The intensity and intimacy of it was wonderful, her voice was clear, precise and open with no coloration. Sonus Faber has always had a reputation for doing a great job with mid range, but when Tony Levin’s bass came it was quickly apparent that these speakers are more than capable of handling low frequencies with grace, precision and power!
Image may be NSFW.
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I moved on to film content next. I like to use the third chapter from “House of Flying Daggers” when I want to know how well matched speakers are. This scene is challenging because there is a lot going on for every channel towards the end of it. Yet in the beginning of the scene there are many subtle things to listen for. A pair of front speakers that image well will make the water fountain sound as though it is up and to the left, far outside the physical location of the speakers, and in a small room with a great system I have heard it sound as though the trickle of water is running down the wall of the room! The Veneres did a fabulous job with this however when the beans started flying the surround channels were very weak. I even stopped to make sure that I was in the correct surround mode and that I had the correct speakers plugged in. After some investigating I discovered what the issue was. The Veneres are a 6 ohm speaker and are not super efficient for a modern speaker.
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Venere 1.5
Because we change things in this room so much we typically leave distance and channel level settings at the factory default for the receivers. After I took the time to adjust the Level setting for the surrounds everything dropped into place and the soundstage for surround was easily as good as or better than the two channel imaging was! After reading the spec sheet I discovered that the issue was that the 2.5 are 89db of sensitivity and the 1.5 is only 85db. Where 89db is reasonably typical, 85db is pretty darn low for a modern speaker, particularly a 6 ohm speaker. Having said that modern receivers have more than enough flexibility to overcome this issue and modern amplifiers have more than enough horse power to power a system of Venere. I always recommend using a separate preamp/receiver and amplifier for any system, but I highly recommend it for this Sonus Faber system, could you use a well powered AVR? Certainly, but you would be sacrificing a great deal of detail and impact by not having a separate amplifier. To be fair this statement is true for ANY speaker system. More on this next week…..
Outside of this issue, the Venere look and sound amazing. Sonus Faber, at least around the shop, have always had a reputation for being difficult to setup and tough to drive. It appears that Sonus Faber has built a speaker that is very easy to set up and just needs a bit more power to get the best performance out of.
Sonus Faber also has a reputation for building beautiful speakers and the Venere live up to that expectation in a remarkable way. If you haven’t seen them in person please rush out and take a look! They are elegant, modern and beautiful.
All in all, I was impressed with the new Venere, the image and soundstage is impressive, they are tonally well balanced and will add to your enjoyment even when they are not playing music. I wonder if I can get a trade going………
And always remember; the proof is in the listening!
Do you have questions, ideas, or products you would like to see reviewed? Let me know what you want to see in this blog in the future! Contact me at JHeld@hifihousegroup.com