Loudspeakers

Livio Cucuzza, Sonus faber's Chief Design Officer, has worked on the last three generations of the Homage series, and the journey has been one of discovery. 'When I started working for Sonus faber, 13 years ago, the company was focused on finalising its flagship speaker "The Sonus faber" [HFN Feb '11]', says Livio. 'My first task was to take the lessons learnt and imagine how we might rebuild all our other speaker collections over the next few years'.

First in line was, arguably, Sonus faber's most iconic and longstanding loudspeaker – the Amati, named in honour of Nicolò Amati, the Italian renaissance violin maker. 'This was generation three', recalls Livio, 'and the best memory I have from that project is the long nights spent listening to different drivers, especially the midrange units and tweeters. We went back to compare the polypropylene-coned mid unit used in the "Amati Anniversario" with, what turned out to be, the more musical one used in the original Amati Homage'.

This proved a key turning point in the re-direction of Sonus faber's 'voicing'. 'I still remember when we communicated to the CEO our decision to "go back" to a paper midrange and silk dome tweeter, admitting that they sounded superior. Product development is an incredible game which sometimes takes you in huge loops right back to where you started!'

And now? 'The Amati G5 is the third iteration of that "new" starting point, and the most mature to date. The original recipe is still there but everything has evolved.' PM