I have been reading The Absolute Sound, Stereophile, listening to high end systems, and upgrading my systems for decades. my theory was swapping SF for my ribbon speakers would change paths to higher overall musical fidelity. I verified my theory by purchasing the used SF Cremona, listening to them for a few days, and reading reviews of the Olympica. There actually wasn’t much uncertainty for me. Sonus Faber for me captures a natural sound like no other. They sounded exactly as I expected in my system. Typically I can read professional reviews and pretty well tell what something is going to sound like in my system, provided I am changing only one thing.
Years earlier I had been out with a friend auditioning systems. I was struck with a characteristic of Sonus Faber I had never heard before. It was a coherency and a unique sound… I could not put a word on it… well, dirt came to mind… not in a bad way (ok, I’m weird, I had no word)… now I would call it organic… natural. Those low end Sonus stuck in my subconscious. They stayed there until I felt the need to make my system sound more like the real thing and less like a studio monitoring system (highlighting details, mastering, and venue as if in a spotlight). They did, put me on a path for far greater musical gestalt (with detail) and away from just senseless detail and slam.
Sorry about rambling. It is interesting to trace this decision back so many years.
