Sonus Faber Elipsa

About two years ago I reviewed Sonus Faber’s gorgeous-looking, gorgeous-sounding Stradivarius loudspeaker. This year Sumiko showed its $20k little brother, the Sonus-Faber Elipsa.

I have to say, to my ear, this was an even better speaker than the $40k Strad. Driven by quite affordable Primare electronics and fed by $35k SME 30 turntable with an SME 5 arm and $2.5k Sumiko Anniversary cartridge, the Elipsa was a veritable model of openness, ease, and neutrality. The extent to which this sizeable three-way, which uses the Strad woofer, the Cremona tweeter, and a new midrange designed specifically for this speaker, disappeared into the soundfield was astonishing. Save for a slight hump in the midbass (perhaps room-induced), timbres were incredibly accurate, dynamics excellent, and the high treble as airy and uncolored as anything I heard short of the Lansche plasma tweeter.

On top of this and in spite of the midbass bump, the Elipsa was the only speaker I heard at the show that accurately reproduced the cello and contrabass pizzicatos in the ostinato at the start of Lutoslawski¹s Les Espaces du Sommeil [Columbia]. Everything else turned them into dull thumps. Very impressive! Indeed, this is another speaker I would love to review.

Return to CES 2007 report