Sonus Faber Amati G5 ... Italian floorstanding loudspeaker supremos

This fifth generation iteration of the Amati Homage loudspeaker is on demonstration at Carlton Audio Visual. They are named after the 16th Italian luthier, Andrea Amati, who was the first in a long lineage of celebrated Cremonese violin makers including Antonio Stradivari.

Like the best violins of that era, the sound of an Amati speaker has always been rich, vibrant and brilliant yet can deliver details at an almost imperceptible whisper changing between the two effortlessly.

It is so hard for a speaker to recreate the sound of a Violin accurately. Vibrato and the lower harmonics in the sound can so easily be lost leaving a glassy sound to the treble and losing the soul of the music. As a professional string player, I still feel that Sonus Faber Reference and Homage series do this better than any other loudspeaker I've heard (I have heard many loudspeakers!) 

One of my reference CDs is Richard Tognetti playing the Bach solo partitas on a 1743 Guarneri violin and yes that's another Cremonese Violin maker. On these speakers, suddenly you can tell he's playing one of the best instruments in the world.

It is possible that these are the most long term listenable of any high end loudspeaker. The vision of Sonus faber is to deliver the music but to avoid that analytical coldness that so many of the highly revealing ultra high end transducer brands are designed with in order to make a quick sale in a competitive demonstration situation. With the Homage series on the other hand it is possible to have a long term musical relationship with the loudspeaker where the romance dosn't fade ....