Review: Sonus Faber Cremona Speaker

Brphilharmoniker, you mentioned that Mahlers were too big for your room. What is your listening room size? I have heard the Mahlers last fall in Denver at the Audiofest driven by the new Rowland 312. . . the sound was to die for. I listen almost exclusively to classical music. On that occasion I played Edgar Meyer playing Bach's 5th cello suite on double bass, Dvorak's 2nd movement of the 9th Symphony with the Israel Phyl conducted by Bernstein, and Lara St. John on Bach's 3rd violin sonata. There was nothing I heard at the show that equal the setup in the Vienna Mahler room.
If your room were too small for the Mahlers, you may want to try the Vienna Strauss.

Hi,

I auditioned the Cremona with Meridian G07 CDP G02 Preamp and G57 amp (Cardas Neutral Reference Interconnect and MIT Speaker Cables) in 8 X 5 meters room with some acoustic treatment but relatively low ceiling .
Speakers were placed on the long axis, were about 1m away from the back wall, 1.5 m away from the side walls and were slightly toed-in so the focal point will be slightly behind my listening position.
Material I auditioned them with:
1. Diana Krall's "Love Scenes"
2. Vivaldi's four seasons (Salvatore Accardo's performance played on original Stradivari violin recorded on XRCD II)
3. Trio Esperança - Nosso Mundo
4. Stan Getz - Bossa Nova
5. Supertramp - Breakfast in America
6. Jesse Cook - Vertigo
and some more acoustical and classical material.

Impressions:
Might bass, too dominant IMHO, overshadowing what could have been extremely sweet, smooth and musical mid (the Sonus Faber Forte IMHO). I almost wanted to cut the lower bass driver (which would have made them a flour stand version of Cremona Auditor...).
Honestly, as much as I wanted to like the Cremona I liked my setup (below) better:
I found mine to be a more balanced and natural sounding setup overall, although mids were not as sweet, lush and smooth as the Cremona ones.
This overwhelming bass was not as dominant when playing large orchestral classical music where the extra slam gave it a sense of volume and authority.

I assume that there are a couple of reasons for my impressions:
a. Could be that the listening room was not ideal for these speakers. I find acoustics to be one of the biggest factors, in sound reproduction, regardless of the gear.
b. Could be that the synergy with the Meridian gear was not great. I have seen it in the past when hooking Meridian 105 Monoblocks and Dynaudio Contour 1.4S (terrible synergy with over pronounced bass to the extent of wanting to run away in the middle of the audition - like one of these embarrassing American Idol moments...).
c. Maybe the Cremona does have a heavy bass and is not as tonally balanced as some other SF speakers.

All in all it was a disappointment for me.

I did not hear the Guarneri Memento to compare.

My current gear is:
Sonus Faber Grand Piano Home
Meridian 596 DVD/CDP
Meridian G02
Meridian G57
Madrigal Labs Cz Gel balanced interconnects (between the G02 and the G57) and Madrigal MDC-1 between the 596 (RCA only) and the G02.
Cardas Crosslink Speaker cables.

My listening room is almost similar to the one in which I auditioned the Cremona but mine has a higher ceiling and two 1.5-2m openings in the back walls of its corners so it is not a shoe box but a bit irregular. There is no special acoustic treatment. Just the standard wall to wall rug.

Would love to hear your thoughts this.

Cheers,

Doron

qwerty,
If you read my posting you would see that the Cremonas I listened to were played on a Dealers System.
He was using Linn equipment. The models were quite pricey because he bragged about each piece (CD Player, Preamp, Amp ) being around $10,000.

Anyway, the speakers sounded very good while playing Audiophile recordings at low levels. When I tried to play louder rock then they distorted.

The Dealer had the speakers out into the room and way away from the sidewalls (almost in the middle ). It could be that this contributed to the lack of dyanmics that I heard while listening to the familiar Rock recordings.
With that lacking , I turned up the volume, then they distorted ,it was probably at a level they were not meant to be played at.

Maybe I could add a bit to this discussion. The Cremonas have a slight bump in the low end frequency response. The bump can be seen in some of the measurements. This isn't much of an issue by itself, but if the electronics, cables, or room acoustics accentuate this frequency as well, then there could be problems. Also, the cremonas are reasonably efficient, but have a nasty phase angle in the lower registers as well, so they can be tricky for amps. Lastly, they have a very wide dispersion pattern. I found that I could not turn up the volume when the speakers were set-up along the short wall of my room without them sounding terrible, but the Cremonas sound great along the long wall

Briang, Interesting...
Now that I think about it, I did comment to the Dealer that the listening room appeared to be square in shape.
That is probably why the Dealer had them out in the room to smooth out the frequency bump.