Sonus faber minuetto loudspeaker

Sonus Faber Minuetto loudspeaker

By Corey Greenberg • Posted: May 10, 2013 • Published: Oct 1, 1994 Share Tweet Email

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image: http://cdn.stereophile.com/images/996sonus.mil.jpg I know, I know—"NOT ANOTHER $%#$ SONUS $%#$# FABER REVIEW IN $%#$# Stereophile!!" In just the past two years or so alone we've spilled a pretty fat bottle of ink on this Italian speaker line: Martin Colloms reviewed the $12,500/pair Extrema (Vol.15 No.6) and $9000/pair Guarneri Homage (Vol.17 No.7); Jack English covered the $4500/pair Electa Amator (Vol.15 No.10); and Larry Greenhill wrote about the $1800/pair Minima FM2 (Vol.16 No.4). That's a lotta jizzatoni, so let me tell you right off the bat that when I called Italy a few months ago, speakers were the last thing on my mind.

I wanted shoes.

See, I've always wanted a pair of those Italian lizard-skin loafers you see all the suave and de-boner Italian cool guys like Jacques Brel and Sean Connery wearing. I figure if I'm going to sit on my front stoop drinking a 40-ouncer all day, I want to dress the part, you know? So I tried to think of an Italian I could call for a good deal on some shoes, and the only one I could think of besides Rocky Balboa was Sonus Faber's designer, Franco Serblin, who I finally reached at his country villa. [brring] "Chess? Hel-lo?"

"Umm...theez eez Corey Greenberg...eez theez Signor Franco Serblin, por favor?"

"Chess, yoo eedyot—speek English!"

"Monsignor Serblin, can you send me some cool shoes like you guys wear?"

"Choose? Yoo want mee send yoo choose?"

"Yeah, shoes. Those real thin cool-man loafers, for I am a man of simmering passion."

"I choose send yoo my Minuettos...very beautiful leather."

"Bitchin'!"

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So you can imagine my surprise when I opened up the box that came from Italy a few weeks later and found a pair of Sonus Faber's $1500/pair Minuetto speakers instead of some stylin' slippers. They were mo' beautiful than any shoe I've ever seen, though, so I figured I'd hitch 'em up to my hi-fi rig and see what all the Faber fuss was about.

Italian dressing The Minuetto is the least expensive speaker in the Sonus Faber line, even though it's got a bigger cabinet and woofer than the $1800 Minima. However, like the rest of the Sonus line, the Minima is fitted with a version of the expensive Dynaudio Esotar tweeter, while the Minuetto has been given a less costly Vifa tweeter. The Minuetto's 7" plastic-coated paper-cone woofer is also sourced from Vifa, and is ported via a 1.75"-diameter port located on the Minuetto's rear panel. As with the rest of the line, the Minuetto crosses its drivers over with simple first-order, 6dB/octave filters, which internal inspection showed to be completely potted over with a hardened black gunk said to reduce vibrations.

The woofer low-pass and tweeter high-pass sections of the crossover are available separately at the two pairs of gold-plated binding posts on the speaker's rear. You'd think these separate terminals for the tweeter and woofer would encourage owners to bi-wire the Minuettos, but Sumiko's John Hunter strongly advised me against bi-wiring them, claiming that doing so would "throw the time domain around" and impair soundstaging and overall coherence. Sumiko recommends using a single run of speaker cable instead, with the supplied gold-plated jumpers paralleling the woofer and tweeter terminals. So that's how I wired 'em up.

Looks-wise, the Minuetto is easily the most gorgeous speaker I've had through here. Like a beautiful wo-man, to look at and rub your hand over eet eez to desire eet, my friend. (See why I need them shoes?) The solid, deeply stained walnut cabinets with their perfectly rounded edges and the dark pebbled leather covering on the speaker's face give it an aroma of luxury and class that you just don't sniff from most speakers at any price. Even my girlfriend, Dara, who wishes all speakers were invisible, was knocked out by how good-looking the Minuettos are.

"Let's keep these!" she decided as I unboxed them.

"But we haven't even heard them yet!"

"Who cares? They look great!"

How come whenever I employ this judgmental hierarchy when discussing wimmens I get a kick in the 'nads? It's because I don't have a cool pair of Italian loafers on when I toss off that kind of savoir faire thang, that's why. Sumiko also sent along a pair of the $395 stands they custom-build for the Minuetto—30"-tall jobs with a solid chunk of patio tile for the base, and hollow aluminum posts meant to be filled with sand, lead shot, or a combination of the two. Sumiko also supplies thin sheets of vibrationabsorbing Navcom to go between the Minuetto and the base. Interestingly, the Sumiko stands are not spiked, and even though my listening room floor is carpeted, Sumiko didn't recommend using anything pointy under the stands to couple them to the concrete floor under the carpet layer. Sumiko also stresses that much trial and error revealed the stand's 30" height to be the best distance from the floor for the Minuetto to sound its best; they recommend you stick with this height if you want to go with another company's stands.

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Di suono Very smooth and polite, with a really nice midrange, but too dull in the highs for my taste. I was real impressed by the Minuetto's detail and freedom from coloration through the all-important midrange, but overall I felt its balance to be too rolled-off on top to get overly excited about the speaker. I mean, I liked it okay, but I could never listen past the way the Sonus Faber dulled the leading edge of transients and basically filtered the high end so that cymbals that are supposed to go "sssssssssss" went "fshhhhhhh."

This blunted treble balance also tended to soften the tone of electric guitar too much for my liking— Jimmie Vaughan's wide range of Strat tones on his Strange Pleasure solo record were all duller in timbre from what I normally hear from my reference NHT 3.3s, and even high-quality cheapspeakers like the $230/pair NHT SuperZero and the $200/pair B&W 2001. I know that many people like the Grain-B-Gone effect this kind of speaker response has on a hi-fi system, but I prefer a more neutral balance that lets me hear exactly what the recording truly sounds like—warts and all. Maybe I'm stupid this way--who knows? In any event, there are lots of people who prefer the Minuetto's kind of airless treble balance—especially those who are only concerned with how well a system resembles the tonal balance of sitting well away from the stage at a classical-music concert. For music-lovers with a wider range of tastes, I'm not sure this kind of balance serves all kinds of music equally well.

The Minuetto's treble rolloff reduced the speakers' ability to present a soundstage as deep as the best speakers I've heard. The Minuettos were able to throw up a very large and seamless soundscape with recordings that had it in the first place, like the MoFi Muddy Waters Folk Singer record; but its depth was slightly less, well, deep than I'm normally used to. I tried the Minuettos in a much larger room than my current 11' by 14' listening room, but their sense of depth didn't noticeably improve.

To the Minuetto's credit, its midrange is very, very musical and detailed, with excellent articulation on vocals. Johnny Cash's new American Recordings (American 45520-2) is my new acid test for vocals, and the Minuettos were able to float a solid center image with little of the bloat, chestiness, and honk of many other speakers in this price range. The Minuetto was very sensitive to where I sat on the vertical listening axis, though—for reg'lar folk tuning in, that means "it sounded kinda funny when I slumped down or sat up in my chair." I've heard this effect before, almost always with speakers featuring simple first-order crossover slopes like the Minuetto's. The various Thiels suffer from this effect, although the Dunlavy SC-1s, which also have first-order crossovers, don't have a problem with this at all. To my ears, the Minuettos sounded best when I was listening to them with my ears roughly at the same level as the woofers.

The Minuetto also had a lively, agile bass range. Of course, its extension wasn't much past 50Hz; but within its range, it was able to resolve subtleties in the sound of bass guitars and kickdrums much better than the ProAc Studio 100 (reviewed elsewhere in this issue), although not nearly to the degree of the $4000/pair NHT 3.3. There's all kinds of stuff happening in the low end on the Latin Playboys CD (Slash 45543-2)—lots of very pure-sounding direct-injected bass tracks—and the Minuettos were able to resolve this to a greater degree than the Studio 100s.

Dynamically, this is definitely a speaker for small-scale music rather than rock'n'roll warfare. While the Minuetto can play surprisingly loudly for a speaker of this size without totally crapping out, it doesn't really hold itself together at Rock-Approved levels as well as the similarly priced ProAc Studio 100—the upper midrange starts to squawk and the tweeter starts getting spiky. When I had the Minuettos hooked

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up, I found myself listening to a lot less rock; and whether that's a virtue of the speaker or not is for you to decide.

Both the Minuetto and ProAc's Studio 100 are ported, stand-mounted two-ways, roughly the same size and price, both attempt to deliver a good slice of their more-expensive siblings' sound at a much lower price, and both were designed by foreign folks in foreign lands, so comparisons between the two were a natural. While I found something to like about each speaker, what I really want is something that falls somewhere between their very different characters. My rig got too dull with the Sonus Fabers, too bright with the ProAcs; somewhere between them is a world-beating $1450/pair speaker, but I'm still looking.

Conclusion As with the ProAc Studio 100, I found some aspects of the Sonus Faber Minuetto's sound to my liking; but overall, I wasn't all that taken with the speaker—it's just too dull in the highs for me. Interestingly, I found the Sumiko-recommended OCOS speaker cable to be a significant contributor to the Minuetto's treble rolloff, as replacing it with Kimber 4TC made for a much less dull and over-smooth balance. Still, even with the Kimber, the Minuetto was too dull in its tonal balance when compared with other speakers in this range, like the $1000/pair Dunlavy SC-1, the $1295 Epos ES 14, and the $880 NHT SuperZero/SW2P sub/sat system.

If you like a more polite, reticent-sounding speaker, by all means check out the Sonus Faber Minuetto— it's got great midrange and a very detailed, rhythmic low end. But if, like me, you're looking for a speaker that accurately reproduces the input signal fed it, the Minuetto isn't what you're looking for.

Sonus Faber Minuetto loudspeaker Specifications Share Tweet Email

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Sidebar 1: Specifications Description: Two-way ported, stand-mounted loudspeaker. Drivers: 7" (170mm) cellulose/acrylatecone woofer, 1" (26mm) ferrofluid-damped silk-dome tweeter. Frequency response: 55Hz–20kHz ±3dB. Crossover: first-order slopes, no frequency given. Sensitivity: 88dB/W/m. Impedance: 8 ohms nominal.

Recommended amplifier power: 25–120W. Cabinet: solid walnut, individual struts of quartersawn (like I knows what the hell that means).

Dimensions: 13.8" (350mm) H by 9" (230mm) W by 11" (280mm) D. Weight: 22 lbs (10kg) each.

Serial number of review samples: 2214.

Price: $1500/pair (1994), no longer availabe (2013); dedicated stands cost $395/pair. Approximate number of dealers: 30.

Manufacturer: Sonus Faber, 36057 Arcugnano (Vi), Italy. Tel: (39) 44-962669. Fax: (39) 44-962687.

US distributor: Sumiko, 3101 Telegraph Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705. Tel: (510) 843-4500. Fax: (510) 843-7120. Web: www.sumikoaudio.net.

Sonus Faber Minuetto loudspeaker Systema di reviewini Share Tweet Email

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Sidebar 2: Systema di reviewini

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I played LPs on a Well Tempered Turntable fitted with a Naim ARO tonearm and Sumiko Transfiguration MC cartridge; CDs were played on a Theta Data Basic transport Linque'd to Theta's new Generation V digital processor; and eight-tracks were played on a Wollensak 8050A deck.

Preamps included the Audible Illusions Modulus 3, my own buffered passive job, and Exposure's XVII. I tried the Minuettos with an Aragon 4004 Mk.II, an Exposure IV Dual-Regulated, and my vintage Dynaco Stereo 70 tube amp, with the bulk of the listening done with the Aragon.

Interconnects were Kimber's silver KCAG and copper PBJ, and I used the Minuettos with a double run of the Sumiko-supplied OCOS speaker cable, wired in parallel rather than in a bi-wired configuration. I also did some listening to the speakers with a speaker cable I'm much more familiar with—Kimber 4TC—as well as Kimber's silver 4AG. Both Kimber cables were used in single runs. All gear was plugged into a Power Wedge AC-line conditioner.—Corey Greenberg

Sonus Faber Minuetto loudspeaker Measurements Share Tweet Email

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Sidebar 3: Measurements The Sonus Faber's B-weighted sensitivity, at a calculated 85dB/W/m, was moderate for a small speaker. Its impedance (fig.1) is kind to amplifiers, remaining above 6.5 ohms at low frequencies, and above 12 ohms in the treble. The port is tuned to 42Hz, the frequency of the saddle between the two low-frequency impedance peaks, though the lower peak is much lower in frequency than is usually the case. image: http://cdn.stereophile.com/images/996SFMfig1.jpg

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Fig.1 Sonus Faber Minuetto, electrical impedance (solid) and phase (dashed) (2 ohms/vertical div.).

The individual response plots for the drivers and port (fig.2) reveal the port output—the bandpass centered on 50Hz—to be significantly down in level from that of the woofer. It also has a significant peak in its output at 900Hz, though this will probably have no subjective consequences, due to its low level and the fact that the port faces the rear. The woofer's output is humped up in the upper bass, though relatively flat through the midrange and rolling off smoothly above 2kHz. The tweeter comes in slowly between 1 and 3kHz, rising to its maximum output level above 8kHz. image: http://cdn.stereophile.com/images/996SFMfig2.jpg

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Fig.2 Sonus Faber Minuetto, acoustic crossover on tweeter axis at 45" corrected for microphone response, with nearfield woofer and port responses below 300Hz and 1kHz, respectively.

The integration of these drive-unit responses on the tweeter axis at a microphone distance of 45" and averaged across a 30° horizontal window is shown in fig.3. The midrange and lower midrange are shelved-up by up to 5dB, while the low treble is shelved-down by 2dB. Here is much of the reason for Corey's finding the Sonus Faber to have a "polite," over-dull balance. The relative lack of energy in the presence region (an octave below the suckout in the Audio Physic Step's mid-treble, a speaker reviewed by Jack English elsewhere in this issue) will result in a balance that will be too uninvolving for many tastes. The hump up in the midbass, however, will endow the Minuetto with impressive low frequencies, as CG commented. image: http://cdn.stereophile.com/images/996SFMfig3.jpg

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Fig.3 Sonus Faber Minuetto, anechoic response on tweeter axis at 45" averaged across 30° horizontal window and corrected for microphone response, with complex sum of nearfield woofer and port responses below 300Hz.

It's possible that the Minuetto's limited HF dispersion also contributes to its mellow balance. Fig.4, which shows just the differences to be found off-axis to the speaker's sides, reveals that the off-axis falloff in the Minuetto's tweeter output occurs more rapidly than is normal with a 1" dome tweeter. This will give the listening room's reverberant field an HF-less balance which will exacerbate the recessed onaxis sound quality. image: http://cdn.stereophile.com/images/996SFMfig4.jpg

Fig.4 Sonus Faber Minuetto, horizontal response family at 45", normalized to response on tweeter axis, from back to front: differences in response 90°–5° off-axis; reference response; differences in response 5°–90° off-axis.

Corey remarked upon the Minuetto's sensitivity to vertical listening height due to its use of first-order crossover filters. This is confirmed by its vertical-dispersion graph (fig.5). As well as the top octaves rolling off more than a few degrees off the tweeter axis, the presence-region depression is exaggerated by a crossover suckout appearing both above and below this axis. In addition, if you sit too high, the upper midrange becomes exaggerated in level; sit too low and the upper midrange starts to develop a suckout. image: http://cdn.stereophile.com/images/996SFMfig5.jpg

Fig.5 Sonus Faber Minuetto, vertical response family at 45", normalized to response on tweeter axis, from back to front: differences in response 45°–5° off-axis above; reference response; differences in response 5°–45° off-axis below.

In general, a designer will choose to use first-order filters to give time-coherent performance. However, with conventional dynamic drive-units, this will also involve the tweeter having to be physically steppedback somehow, due to its smaller chassis depth. This is normally achieved with a sloping baffle, as in the Spica and Thiel designs, or by staggering separate driver modules (Vandersteen and Dunlavy Audio Labs). Without either of these strategies being adopted, the speaker will not be time-coherent, as is revealed by the Minuetto's step response (fig.6). Both drivers have the same positive acoustic polarity, but the tweeter's output pulse leads that of the woofer by 300µs or so. The good news is that the Sonus Faber's cumulative spectral-decay, or waterfall, plot (fig.7) is very clean, with only some lowlevel hash present in the treble. image: http://cdn.stereophile.com/images/996SFMfig6.jpg

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Fig.6 Sonus Faber Minuetto, step response on tweeter axis at 45" (5ms time window, 30kHz bandwidth).

image: http://cdn.stereophile.com/images/996SFMfig7.jpg

Fig.7 Sonus Faber Minuetto, cumulative spectral-decay plot at 45" (0.15ms risetime).

Finally, while the speaker's solid-feeling cabinet has a couple of resonant modes noticeable—fig.8 shows a waterfall plot calculated from the impulse response of a simple PVDF-tape accelerometer fastened to the center of the rear panel—these are high enough in frequency that they should not have too much of a subjective effect.—John Atkinson image: http://cdn.stereophile.com/images/996SFMfig8.jpg

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Fig.8 Sonus Faber Minuetto, cumulative spectral-decay plot of accelerometer output fastened to center of enclosure back panel.

(MLS driving voltage to speaker, 7.55V; measurement bandwidth 2kHz.)

Read more at http://www.stereophile.com/content/sonus-faber-minuetto-loudspeakermeasurements#tY0Z8sVuLQBhr7mF.99