SAYING GOODBYE TO AN OLD FRIEND (the Sonus Faber Extremas)

We decided to put our Sonus Faber Extremas up for sale… and they are now SOLD. Gone. Speakers that I swore I would keep for all of my days…Well, I’ve learned to not swear that anymore about anything after letting the Levinson 20.6 amps and the Extremas go.

I bought these speakers in… 1996? This was right after we had the Dunlavy SC-4 6 foot tall speakers for a few years (The Dunlavy was a good speaker, but between the cheap drivers that he used in them, and the fact that we were using Dunlavy speaker cables – Mr. Dunlavy insisted cables made no difference in sound… *sheesh* yes, we were just poor gullible audiophiles at one time too – made the speakers sound hard and uninvolving. Had we put a pair of Valhalla on those puppies… well, history would have unfolded very differently here at the Belfry).

So, to the other ‘extreme’ (he he). A very small speaker with VERY high quality drivers. Lots of involvement and no hardness. A step up to be sure. We had been driving the Dunlavys with the Levinson 20.6 monoblocks (monster blocks 🙂 ) amps and they did the Extremas just fine.

If I remember correctly, the 20.6 aps were Stereophile 1992 amp of the year, and I know that the Extremas were 1992 speaker of the year and the Dunlavys 1994 speaker of the year. Did I mention the word ‘gullible’ in a previous paragraph? Yes, we paid attention to Stereophile rankings in those days – but, you know, they are good speakers. In a sea of so many choices, Stereophile does help wittle the list down (and I can’t help thinking that the modern Stereophile is more, shall we say …. uh, advertising driven … these days, like the rest of our society of late, it seems (notice that we do not have blinking squares of colorful ads on our site – 10 ads to each line of text? That is Neli’s fault 🙂 … Neli wants me to clarify: Although I would prefer to have some tasteful advertsing to help defray the costs of the Blog(s coming soon) and the Audiophiles Guide to the Galaxy), she does not).

Oh, back to the story, then. It was in our pursuit of getting some speakers that had bass again, like the Dunlavys, that, after 2+ years, we ended up at CES and getting the Campaniles (I mean, the 900 lb per side Triolons, for heavens sake, fit in our listening room, how were these little Extremas supposed to fill up that room with sound?).

Below we have a bunch of photos. As always, Sonus Faber makes beautiful looking speakers – and the Extremas were in there the top 3 or 4 best lookin’ (let’s see, we got the Stadivarious, the Amati, the …? OK, in the top 3, then).

We ste up the Extremas for a demo… no place to put them but in front of the Sound Labs.

NO!, it isn’t the Beauty and the Beast – but it didn’t help the sonics any to have the Sound Labs U1 right behind the speakers that way.

We drove them with the Edge NL Reference 800 watt amps. The Extremas, of course, loved the power. Even after all these years, their $5-6K resale value is still competitive with the best the industry has to offer.

These next few pictures are just eye-candy. The Extremas still look better than most monitor speakers out there.

The 6-post stand that came with the Extrema, that you see here, is a monster. About 105 lbs and, I find’ somewhat unwieldy to carry around. We never did get around to spiking the puppies. Hmmmmmmmm……

The back of the Extrema is very interesting. It has a rear-firing 6 x 8 inch (?) woofer, shielded by a matching metal cover.

One of the very few crossovers that has their own external cooling fins! Notice also the bass adjustment knob.

This, and the deepness of the cabinet reveals the philosphy behind the contruction of these speakers: Build a speaker with the wonderful Esotar tweeter and with as much bass as one can possible squeeze into a 50 lb(!) monitor sized box.

Here you can see that rear-firing woofer a little better…