September 2018


Best Of 2018 Blue Note Equipment Awards

Sonus Faber Amati Tradition Floorstanding Loudspeaker
Price: $29,900 per pair
Click here to read the complete review.

  As the largest speaker yet to grace Phil Gold's listening room, the Amati Tradition proved a delight both visually and sonically.

Sonus Faber have gone to great lengths to mechanically decouple the speaker from the floor. Their patented ZVT (Zero Vibration Transmission) system features alternating surfaces metal / elastomer / metal overlapped inside the substantial bracket/spike group. It inhibits the transmission of vibration from the drivers into the floor and acoustic feedback into the speakers.

The drivers are all designed in house. The tweeter was first seen in the $70,000 Lilium speaker. It's a 1.1" silk dome design with "Arrow Point" DAD (Damped Apex Dome), implemented with a natural wood acoustic labyrinth rear chamber. The 6" midrange, mounted just below the tweeter, has a neodymium magnet system for linear dynamic response. A sandwich construction combining a syntactic foam core between surface skins of cellulose pulp creates a lightweight but stiff cone for the twin 8.7" woofers. The "Paracross topology" crossover sets the crossover pints at 80Hz, 250Hz and 2500Hz.

Phil Gold says, "I've always enjoyed seeing exquisite engineering and superb finishing married to strong musicality. Sonus Faber have a real winner here. If you had asked me to guess the price, I would have thought around $50,000, so the list of $29,000 makes it a highly competitive offering. The chief sonic virtues include a very wide bandwidth, strong imaging and an unusual sense of ease that makes extended listening a real pleasure. This one works best in a larger room, given the prodigious volume of bass and its power handling abilities, but if you have a smaller room, check out the rest of the Tradition line."

Click here to read the complete review.

Previous Annual Blue Note Awards

Product of the Year Awards 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, and 2001.