Sonus Faber Extrema
(1991) We step back to 1991 with these classic Italian standmounters
Launched back in 1991, Sonus Faber’s original Extrema were seen as the culmination of everything the Italian manufacturer had learned in its first decade. Up to that point, the brand had carved out a niche at premium price levels, with a limited range of compact standmounters that were lauded as much for their immaculately crafted cabinets as their artfully judged sound.
The Extrema marked its first assault on the top end of the speaker market – at £6000, they were up there with some of the priciest speakers around. With hindsight, that price doesn’t seem unduly excessive, considering the ambitious engineering, exceptional build quality and brilliant performance.
From the front, they look like mid-sized standmounters, measuring 46cm tall and 27cm wide; but, at 55cm, their depth is almost comically out of proportion. There is a useful, though not huge, internal volume of 20 litres, and the whole lot weighs in at a hernia-inducing 40kg.
This is far from a conventional wooden cabinet design. The central part comprises seven separate sections bolted together to form a rigid, lowresonance structure. There’s a 32mm-thick slab of solid walnut on each side, adding further rigidity and damping as well as a dose of visual drama. The combination of curves, angles and colours gives these Sonus Fabers a look unlike any other.
The drive units are arguably just as special. The tweeter is Dynaudio’s Esotar 330T/SF: a 28mm soft dome, regarded as one of the best around at the time. It is mated to a 19cm Audio Technology mid/ bass unit, that uses a magnesium oxide-loaded polypropylene cone, coated with carboniumacrylate for extra damping and resonance control.
Take the mid/bass unit out of the cabinet and the magnet on the back is huge. It’s about the size of the cone, suggesting that there’s plenty of magnetic drive, but also that no corners have been cut. That impression is solidified by a large 75mm voice coil and contemporary looking open chassis design.
Around the back of the enclosure, you’ll find a thick metal plate. Peek through the gap between the plate and panel and you’ll see what looks like an oval-shaped drive unit. In fact, it’s a passive radiator, designed to augment the speaker’s low-frequency output, centred on 35Hz. Early Extrema models used KEF’S long-running B139 ‘race track driver’ for the job, but later models (from mid-1992 onwards) switched to the similar TDL 3021GT03. The radiator in the Extrema is unusual because its output can be adjusted via a five-way rotary control on the back panel, allowing the speaker’s bass to be fine-tuned. The adjustment is subtle enough to be useful and allows us to dial in performance really well.
Next to the radiator’s control is a small heatsink – the Extrema has a kind of crossover design we’ve never come across before. The use of a gentle first-order filter is relatively uncommon, but the lack of capacitors is the real talking point here. Sonus Faber’s engineers wanted to avoid these components, so instead they used an inductor in parallel with the tweeter, rather than the usual capacitor in series. For everything to work properly, a resistor is required in the circuit too, but it needs the heatsink to cope with the power demands.
Sonus Faber left nothing to chance by making its own dedicated 55cm-tall steel stands. Coated in textured black paint, they use no fewer than six chunky pillars filled with lead and sand. They are heavy, rigid and do their job brilliantly. Their price back in 1991 was commensurately substantial, at £799.
The Extrema are beautifully made and exude luxury. While the speakers’ proportions may split opinion, there’s no denying the exquisite quality of workmanship. The adjustable passive radiator offers a certain amount of freedom, but we prefer these speakers well out into the listening room and placed with a bit of angle to cross just behind the listening position. This way, we get a wide and expansive soundstage with a precise sense of focus.
This kind of speaker demands a top-class partnering system. Despite being designed three decades ago, they remain immensely revealing and nuanced performers, so a lack of quality from your electronics won’t be hidden. Your amp will need a decent amount of grunt to make full use of the Extrema’s dynamic abilities. A 100W-per-channel output is a good place to start, though there is some leeway for lower-powered combinations to work well – the rated sensitivity of 88db/w/m and nominal 4ohm impedance isn’t unusually brutal. Upon launch, the Extrema were considered exceptional performers and, given a state-of-the-art source such as Naim’s ND555/555PS DR music streamer and our reference Burmester 088/911 Mk3 amp, they still produce magnificent results. They sound so much bigger than their cabinet size suggests; rarely do we come across standmounters that deliver such solidity and authority. Once the passive radiator is dialled-in, we get taut and agile lows with an impressive degree of muscularity.
We listen to Hans Zimmer’s Gladiator OST and the Sonus Fabers deliver demanding tracks such as The Battle with verve, thumping out the vicious crescendos with control. Yet, it is tied together with subtlety and finesse, as shown by the lovely way they render instrumental textures and low-level inflections. There’s a wonderful sense of cohesion that goes hand in hand with seamless integration between the drive units. This is a balanced presentation with an extra element of well-judged richness through the midrange and lower frequencies.
Detail levels are pleasing, though advancements in drive units and cabinet designs have resulted in improvements in resolution and distortion levels since the Extremas were made. A good modern high-end speaker will simply sound cleaner and clearer, but is it more enjoyable? That’s open to debate. We enjoy the insight and effortless fluidity, not to mention their ability to make listening to music really feel like an all-enveloping experience rather than just a mere activity to pass the time. The Extrema seem to have a little bit of magic baked into their sonic DNA.
Judged by current standards, these speakers could be criticised for a lack of rhythmic drive, and we wouldn’t say no to a better sense of organisation when things get really complicated. Even so, the important thing is that we’re having so much fun we can’t help but keep listening. The Sonus Faber Extrema are now 30 years old and there aren’t many good samples knocking about. We hope anyone who owns a pair really cherishes them, because they’re pretty much impossible to replace.
They make listening to music feel like an all-enveloping experience rather than a mere activity to pass the time