The Sonus Faber Lumina II is an interesting looking little speaker, echoing the luxury of the speakers further up the line of the swish Italian brand. It's worth dwelling a bit on their design and build as there are a few things to say. The use of materials is reminiscent of upmarket furniture: the plywood front baffle is inlaid with thin metal stripes and there is a chrome finish around the woofer and the rubber surround to the tweeter and if you're wondering, that leather jacket is brilliantly and seamlessly joined to the vinyl back of the cabinet.
The whole impression is pretty posh and great care has been taken in attention to detail but the overall look is a bit fussy in my opinion. They also look a tad squat to me as the vent for the downward firing port makes them look shorter than they actually are, and the other problem with this is that there is a rather fragile looking plinth all around the bottom of the speaker and I could imagine trouble if someone over-enthusiastically plonks them down on metal stands after a couple of shandies.
My first 48 hours with these speakers was bizarre. They didn't sound right at all out of the box and I did my best to ignore them, playing them quietly, but on the second day they actually sounded worse to the point where I thought they must be damaged. The upper mid range and treble kind of fused together like badly meshed gears and the bass was saggy and plodding.
And then on the third day, this disappeared like the way a toddler's tantrum inexplicably stops having also started for no reason. They were sounding pretty good but I thought they needed a bit of tweaking placement wise. I toed them in less than I do for my Triangles and suddenly I was getting fantastic imaging. With the superb "I need to start a garden" by Hayley Heynderickx (nightmare to find on streaming services with that spelling) I could pinpoint her voice and right in the middle of the sound stage with the other instruments arranged around and behind it. Every inflection of her voice was apparent and the detail emerging from the accompanying instruments led me to imagine the space where it was recorded.
Higher frequency detail is definitely this speaker's party trick but having been initially wowed by it I found that it was beginning to sound detached from the mid range and the overall impression I was getting was a lack of richness. My Triangle Titus definitely sound less resolving but there is a creamy quality to vocals absent from the Luminas. The micro dynamics are also there with the Titus but less etched in the sound scape and more suggested. Moving on to bigger sounding music, the kind of synthesized trombone sound (I can't think of a better way to describe it) in Michael Kiwanuka's "In denial" does not sound as impactful and cathedral like as it should do. Drums are also less explosive and in my system the downward firing port is not preventing the bass from sounding occasionally boomy.
I suspect though that these shortcomings are not the speakers' fault and that they would be much happier with an amplifier with more muscle. The greater audible detail is there not just in the higher frequencies and this as well as the incredible imaging I think would be better exploited with more power on tap. However, I must say that its performance with a more budget friendly amp was a bit disappointing. That a speaker's performance should scale up with higher level partnering equipment is of course one mark of its true quality. But base line performance is also important and when a speaker manages to sound special with more modest equipment this to my mind is a more remarkable achievement and this is what the Triangle Titus accomplishes spectacularly.
The whole impression is pretty posh and great care has been taken in attention to detail but the overall look is a bit fussy in my opinion. They also look a tad squat to me as the vent for the downward firing port makes them look shorter than they actually are, and the other problem with this is that there is a rather fragile looking plinth all around the bottom of the speaker and I could imagine trouble if someone over-enthusiastically plonks them down on metal stands after a couple of shandies.
My first 48 hours with these speakers was bizarre. They didn't sound right at all out of the box and I did my best to ignore them, playing them quietly, but on the second day they actually sounded worse to the point where I thought they must be damaged. The upper mid range and treble kind of fused together like badly meshed gears and the bass was saggy and plodding.
And then on the third day, this disappeared like the way a toddler's tantrum inexplicably stops having also started for no reason. They were sounding pretty good but I thought they needed a bit of tweaking placement wise. I toed them in less than I do for my Triangles and suddenly I was getting fantastic imaging. With the superb "I need to start a garden" by Hayley Heynderickx (nightmare to find on streaming services with that spelling) I could pinpoint her voice and right in the middle of the sound stage with the other instruments arranged around and behind it. Every inflection of her voice was apparent and the detail emerging from the accompanying instruments led me to imagine the space where it was recorded.
Higher frequency detail is definitely this speaker's party trick but having been initially wowed by it I found that it was beginning to sound detached from the mid range and the overall impression I was getting was a lack of richness. My Triangle Titus definitely sound less resolving but there is a creamy quality to vocals absent from the Luminas. The micro dynamics are also there with the Titus but less etched in the sound scape and more suggested. Moving on to bigger sounding music, the kind of synthesized trombone sound (I can't think of a better way to describe it) in Michael Kiwanuka's "In denial" does not sound as impactful and cathedral like as it should do. Drums are also less explosive and in my system the downward firing port is not preventing the bass from sounding occasionally boomy.
I suspect though that these shortcomings are not the speakers' fault and that they would be much happier with an amplifier with more muscle. The greater audible detail is there not just in the higher frequencies and this as well as the incredible imaging I think would be better exploited with more power on tap. However, I must say that its performance with a more budget friendly amp was a bit disappointing. That a speaker's performance should scale up with higher level partnering equipment is of course one mark of its true quality. But base line performance is also important and when a speaker manages to sound special with more modest equipment this to my mind is a more remarkable achievement and this is what the Triangle Titus accomplishes spectacularly.
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