This Ultra-Luxe Sonus Faber Suprema Sound System Costs $750,000
Insanely high-end home audio courtesy of the speaker brand’s “most ambitious project ever.”
In just 40 short years, Sonus faber has established quite a reputation to uphold. Qualitatively, the Italian speaker brand is regarded as elite, if not “supreme,” in home-stereo shops worldwide and audiophile forums across the worldwide web. Quantitatively, Sonus faber has received esteemed Red Dot Design Awards and routinely accumulates accolades from sonic-savvy publications like Rolling Stone, HiFi News and Stereophile. Even the name, which roughly translates from Latin to English as “sound artisan,” suggests a certain caliber.
All that said, Sonus faber has somehow outdone itself with the release of the Suprema loudspeaker system, and that’s no overstatement. Described by the brand as its “most ambitious project ever,” the $750,000 apparatus leads as the flagship product among Sonus faber’s already top-shelf Reference Collection. The runner-up Reference Collection offering, the Aida speakers, retails for $140,000 per pair, which raises the question: What makes Suprema worth more than five times that?
“Suprema is probably one of the most extraordinary loudspeaker systems available today,” says Livio Cucuzza, Vice President of Research & Development at Sonus Faber. “Everything in Suprema comes without compromise, from its structural carbon fiber monocoques to the main speakers’ curved, three-dimensional wood enclosures,” he continues, noting that wood is seldom used in high-end speaker manufacturing because of the difficulties it presents in controlling tolerances.
This use of luxurious materials, like multilayered walnut and beech wood, in the service of aesthetic beauty is foundational to Sonus faber’s identity. Shortly before the first Sonus faber workshop opened in 198, company founder Franco Serblin established a steadfast precedent with his very first prototypes, which were crafted from various types of natural wood and inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s sketchbooks. The work of Antonio Stradivari, the master craftsman behind the unparalleled Stradivarius violins, has also long-informed Sonus faber’s designs.
As such, the elegant curves of Suprema’s four speaker cabinets are a far cry from boxy, cookie-cutter units sold at your local electronics retailer. The 242.5-pound main towers feature the figure of a lute with the addition of multi-layered wooden “wings” that protrude slightly at the base, and the outlines of the 227-pound subwoofer cabinets form gentle ellipses. Leather front covers come courtesy of luxury furniture maker Poltrona Frau, a fellow Italian fine goods brand.
These cabinets are beautiful and designed for acoustic excellence. But the actual speaker technology, which Cucuzza says “was developed without any scaled production optimization,” is what commands the lofty price. Each main tower features eight front-firing and two back-firing speakers. Among them are four woofers; the silk-covered mid-tweeter and super tweeter, which deliver the high tones in the treble range; and the new “Camelia” midrange, which delivers middling tones between the bass and treble range via a non-circular shape that was inspired by the Tuscan flower of the same name. The tweeters and Camelia midrange speakers are loaded in a unique internal volume made entirely of recycled cork that was designed in a sonic simulator.
Then there are the subwoofers, which employ two powerful 38-cm loudspeakers featuring forged carbon-fiber membranes and neodymium magnet motor systems to prevent distortion, even when the dial is turned to 11.The two woofers and two main speaker towers are rigged to a cutting-edge active crossover, which filters out unwanted frequencies and powers the speaker system. After these individual components are engineered, tested and assembled together, the system is put through its paces.
“We have a process to tune our speakers called ‘sound quality,’ which offers engineers a solid and replicable base to work on the most impalpable element of our products: the sound,” Cucuzza explains. “We used that same process for Suprema, but given the performance of the system, we added some new tracks. The list of tracks is a secret but features a vast range of genres, including strong electronic music, symphonic tracks, rock pieces, live performances and some simple male and female vocals. Having this kind of variety is crucial in understanding if a system can sound ‘natural.’”
At its price, Suprema is undeniably a prohibitively expensive product. Even so, Cucuzza tells us that “production numbers are confirming our expectations and have almost reached our production limits.” But the product is much more than an exercise in exclusivity tailored to the ultra-wealthy—its innovations will inform other products in Sonus faber’s lineup.
“The main mission [in creating Suprema] was to develop new technologies that will empower our next creations. We thought about Suprema as a motorsport division—the F1 of loudspeakers—where engineers may express themselves without budget limits. A good example of how Suprema’s technologies trickle down to our product families is the recently introduced Sonetto G2 collection, which embodies the Camelia midrange, the cork chamber and other technical solutions directly derived from Suprema.”
The comparison is apt, Sonus faber’s lineup also features factory-upgrade speaker systems for several supercar manufacturers, including Pagani, Maserati and Lamborghini. It’s also not the only automotive analogy Cuzuzza used in our interview.
“Sometimes we say, ‘everyday listeners hear the music, but audiophiles listen to the system.’ Going back to the automotive comparison—when driving a high-performance car on a beautiful road in Tuscany, some people will focus on the view, but enthusiasts will feel the car, how it reacts to different surfaces and how it handles. Sonus faber is focused on offering all listeners an extraordinary experience, regardless of what that looks like.”
As for what that sounds like, words won’t do it justice. What’s more easily described are the reactions of others to hearing Suprema. “When someone is in the listening room and smiles after a few seconds of playback, that is everything—not only to me, but also to our team. With Suprema, that reaction happens very frequently and tells us we’ve done a good job.” That reaction is priceless. Or, in Suprema’s case, it costs $750,000.
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