Used with a wide baseline, the speaker sounded phasey and back near a rear wall, the sound was soft and recessive. It's not too hard to see just which strings are being pulled and how.įirst and foremost, we had some difficulty in determining appropriate positioning. This is in most respects an utterly wonderful and beguiling loudspeaker, but it is not without foibles and criticism. But this is not a loudspeaker that sets out to give the user an easy ride. What you end up with is an unusually elegant tall column, with no hard edges and a very organic shape, enhanced more than a little aesthetically by the unusual grain orientation of the side panels and by the leather trim. These have enough adjustment available for some useful tweaking of the speaker's angle of attack. The enclosure sits on an overhanging steel plinth which provides the wide wheelbase required for stability and of course, anchor points for carpet piercing spikes. Our test pair were supplied in the teak option with a horizontal grain structure, but there's also a nice piano black lacquer finish available. These use horizontally arranged staves of wood, which are glued together and then highly polished. The sides consist of what appear to be resiliently mounted panels. It also serves yet another purpose by helping guarantee a good pneumatic seal around the drivers. The front, top and rear panels are covered in real black leather (not leatherette as in some accounts), which is used to apply surface damping and helps control diffraction with its textured surface. Although this model is from the entry level range, we are dealing with a beautifully constructed, heavy enclosure with a cross section said to mirror that of a lute - it is wider at the front, narrow at the back and has outward bowed side panels.

Sonus faber concertino domus