Sonus Faber Cremona M vs Verity Audio Parsifal

I own Cremonas (pre-M) and Parsifal/Encores. My take:

These are two very different animals.

The Verity has a notable hump in the mid/upper bass and a falling response from there right up thru the entire band. The result is warm and musical, if not the last word in strict neutrality. Add in wonderful imaging/staging and a very revealing mid-band and you've got a great mix - it shows off a lot of what you want to hear in a great recording while sounding much better than it has any right to with less great (particularly those tipped up sizzlers that I seem to own a ton of, i.e. a lot of pop and rock) recordings.

The Cremona is not typical old school SF, the description of which which might not sound too different from my description of the Verity, above. (I also own SF Minuettos, which do have the bass hump, falling response thing going on.) The Cremona has notably more energy in the presence region and scores very highly on the macro-dynamic front. It's also a bit tighter in the bass. IME, it's not lean or hard sounding, but it is less forgiving than the Verity. OTOH, it's a bit more dramatic sounding on large scale music.

BTW, I can't comment on the M version, since I've never had one in my system for comparison.

I like both speakers a lot. On jazz and acoustic (particularly vocal) music, the Verity is an amazingly satisfying speaker. On larger scale music, the best recordings may not sound their very best, but they will usually sound very, very good. Overall, I prefer it to the Cremona - but this comparison will see all kinds of conclusions, depending on the individual listener's personal priority.

Good Luck,

Marty

PS The S/F is IMHO a significantly better looking beast. In my contemporary living room, it's coupled with a Pathos Classic One/Digit combo to make a wonderful contemporary Italian decor statement. Sounds pretty good, too.....

Dtc,

I've used my Cremonas with nearly a dozen different amps (Krell, Odyssey, ARC, Prima Luna, Cary, and several others). I'd agree that the Pathos limits the max effective SPL of the Cremona relative to the higher power SS units. However, I really like it for the moderate listening levels it sees in its current installation. It strikes me as better sounding than most, right up until the SPL reaches the point where it's worse sounding than some. In my circumstance (partially dictated by WAF issues), the Pathos is the best choice.

I do agree that, if it were my main speaker in my listening room, I'd probably go for something with a little more grunt (per your observation).

Marty

Beyond,

I own PL 6 mono amps.

I'm struggling to recall which output tube I settled on for the Cremonas since they ended up with the Pathos pretty quickly. The PL amps subtly, but clearly, change character as you swap output tubes - I suspect that the choice of output tube type is about as significant as the choice of amp model in the PL line. These days, I use KT66s when the PLs are on duty, but that tends to be with Merlin VSMs.

I'd suggest that you call Kevin Deal at Upscale Audio in Upland, Ca. He's a dealer for both SF and PL. He's a good guy and a straight shooter with long experience pairing up these brands.

Good Luck,

Marty