Sonus Faber V's Sonus Faber

The two best sounding speakers Sonus Faber ever designed are the Extremas and Stradavarius. I am lucky to own both and would say these are by far head and shoulders of what's in there lineup.

Not sure if I can agree with some of the claims above.

I have owned almost every single higher end Sonus Faber made except the Stradivarius. After owning Amati for a while, Extrema, though very nice overall, just can't quite compete. The higher efficiency of Amati brings out so much more than Extrema in details, transparency, dynamics, and many other areas. You can see all the newer SF speakers having higher efficiency for the same reason.

Dynaudio Esotar is a very nice tweeter, but it does have its short coming. I have owned Dynaudio Confidence 5 for years, probably the best executed Esotar based speakers, and Amati still betters C5 overall.

I think for overall enjoyment, Cremona is a better speaker than Guarneri unless you limit your listening preference to music without bass.

Thanks for all of your input and responses.

After listening to both the Guarneri and Cremona, I have chosen the Cremona.

Reasons were many, but mainly as follows;

I can now understand the comments by 213cobra on the other thread “crossovers just don't get out of the way with modest power, especially the Guarneri”, whilst the loudness levels from the Guarneri were never a real problem, I always felt that they wanted more, a kind of listening frustration was apparent, as if the Guarneri was dragging the amp along rather than the amp pushing through the speaker (if that makes any sense), conscious of the size of my room, I could not could not have lived with the increase in loudness levels needed to get passed the crossovers. Also the only Guarneri available at the price quoted to me, were shop demonstration models, accordingly they were available only with the 39” stands, from my seating position it seemed to be too high.

I think that the Guarneri is the better loudspeaker, however having said that, the Cremona’s driven by the 30 watt Jadis mono blocks is a magical combination. Another SF dealer (one who uses Guarneri’s at home) advised me that once I listen to the Jadis / Cremona combination I would realise what the word “synergy” actually means, he was so right.

All I am waiting for now is delivery of the Cremona’s (this Friday) then all I will have to do is break them in!

Well, you did the right thing, even though FOR ME the Guarneri would have been a better choice, its YOU who are buying these, not ME. This underscroes the highly subjective aspect of this hobby and why hearing gear is more important than all the opinions you might elicit here....

Have fun!

Kjgp
Have fun
I did the same choice 1,5 years ago (the same dillema) and having lots of fun with SF Cremona.