Sonus Faber: Artisans of Sound – Now Available at Fillion Électronique

Vicenza, 1983: The Birth of a Sound Artisan

Sonus faber's story begins with an enigmatic project: the Snail Project. Before the company even existed, a small group of Italian audiophiles built ten prototypes of an all-in-one speaker, sculpted from solid wood, inspired by a drawing from Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks. The conviction that emerged from this would become law for the following forty years: a sound system must not only faithfully reproduce music, it must also carry the beauty that accompanies that fidelity.

It is this dual calling that gives the house its name. In 1983, in the hills of Vicenza, the first official Sonus faber workshop opened. The name comes from Latin: sonus, sound, and faber, the craftsman. "Artisan of Sound." This is the identity that this small Italian house claimed from the very beginning.

The first speaker to be commercialized, the Parva, fully embodies this philosophy: solid walnut wood, leather, soft-dome tweeter, Kevlar woofer-midrange driver. The Minima, Electa and Electa Amator followed. These first models, made of wood and leather, immediately drew international attention and established the foundation of a signature that would only deepen with time.

1993: The Lute Shape Takes the Stage

Sonus faber's true aesthetic and acoustic turning point came ten years after its founding. In 1993, the house unveiled the Guarneri Homage, the world's first high-fidelity speaker whose cabinetry was inspired by the lute: a wide baffle with sides that narrow toward the back to a single edge. The shape was immediately recognizable — and still is today. 

This choice was not decorative. It was the result of an in-depth study of Italian lutherie, and more specifically of the Cremona school 200 kilometres west of Vicenza, where Andrea Amati, Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri crafted in the 17th century the violins that still define the instrument's excellence today. Sonus faber borrows from these masters their conviction that wood is the resonant material par excellence, and that the form chosen to house it is never arbitrary.

The Homage collection, born from this moment, has since borne the names of the great Cremonese luthiers. Guarneri, Amati, Stradivari, Il Cremonese — each model is a tribute paid to a figure from this tradition. This is indeed where Sonus faber's characteristic voice comes from: warm, natural and singularly expressive, which the house has carefully maintained for forty years.

The Violin Building of Arcugnano

In the late 2000s, Sonus faber left its first Vicenza workshop for a new headquarters, a few kilometres south in the municipality of Arcugnano. The building itself is a statement. Designed by Studio Albanese, a renowned architecture firm from Vicenza, its roofline takes the shape of a violin — hence the name "violin building."

The interior carries the same intention. No concrete walls, only transparent partitions that allow natural light to flow through every space. It is the headquarters of a house that has made its own sound a principle, right down to its architecture. This is also where the Design Lab, the anechoic chamber, final assembly and listening calibration of each speaker are carried out today.

The founding principle of the Design Lab is simple. Every stage of creation — from the first sketch to the final acoustic measurement — must happen under the same roof, by the same team. This continuity is what allows Sonus faber to tune each speaker to its own voice and ensure unparalleled quality control.

Wood, the Primary Material of the Sonus Faber Voice

At Sonus faber, the choice of wood is never a purely aesthetic decision. Each species is selected for its grain, its density and its contribution to the speaker's acoustic architecture. The house has a stated preference for three types of wood in particular:

• Walnut, with its dense grain and great longevity, brings a sophisticated visual signature and ideal acoustic mass for the main body of the speakers.
• Maple, prized for its resilience and vibrancy, lends itself to lighter finishes while resisting warping over time.
• Wengé, with its remarkable hardness and dark colour, offers particular contrast and refinement — a truly noble material for the upper models.

In 2021, Sonus faber took a further step by acquiring De Santi, its historic cabinetry workshop in San Martino di Lupari, near Padua. The workshop had been supplying the house since 1986 and is now fully integrated into the company. Sonus faber thus controls every stage of the woodworking process, from raw material selection to final sanding, and oversees the evolution of production processes and the machinery involved in making these speakers.  

The cabinetry of each speaker goes through an extensive cycle involving several days of treatment, often several weeks of aging, then entirely manual sanding and polishing. The lacquer alone requires up to thirty days of curing at nearly 38°C — it is sculpted more than it is sprayed. The result is that simultaneously deep and living appearance that the attentive eye recognizes immediately.

A Craft That Has Embraced Modernity

Sonus faber's great strength is having successfully combined the traditional gesture of the luthier with the modern tools of acoustic engineering. In Arcugnano, the cutting and shaping of cabinetry panels is done by CNC machining, because the machine remains more precise than the hand for this step. But everything that touches finishing, crossovers, leather, measurement and listening calibration remains entirely manual.

Since 2014, Sonus faber has also designed all of its drivers in-house. Where the house previously used standard drivers from major European manufacturers, it now designs every component — cone, basket, magnet and phase plug — to ensure that no element escapes its signature philosophy and to guarantee the achievement of its quality standards. 

This know-how has also crossed the boundaries of the audio world. Over the years, Sonus faber has entered into sound partnerships with Pagani, Maserati and Wally yachts.

The Current Lineup: From Lumina to Suprema

The Sonus faber lineup is today organized into collections, each holding a particular place in the house's philosophy. Here are the main ones available at Fillion Électronique, in order of their positioning within the range. 

Lumina

The entry point into the Sonus faber universe. Right-angle cabinetry, MDF veneer, leather-wrapped baffle — the Lumina collection brings the house's visual codes into an accessible format without compromising on materials. The range covers bookshelf speakers (Lumina I, Lumina II) as well as floorstanding models (Lumina III, Lumina V), making it equally at home in a stereo system or a home cinema configuration. An Amator edition enriches the collection with revised crossovers and superior finishes in chevron-pattern multi-layer veneer with a lacquered finish.

Sonetto G2

The heart of the lineup. Sonetto G2 (bookshelf speakers Sonetto G2 I and II, floorstanding speakers Sonetto G2 III, V, VIII, and center speaker Sonetto G2 Center) is the first collection to receive genuine heritage from the top of the manufacturer's range: the Camelia midrange driver, cork acoustic chamber, curved-back cabinetry and a DAD ("Damped Apex Dome") tweeter capable of reproducing frequencies up to 40 kHz. It is the first tier where the listener is buying as much acoustic engineering as style. Notably, the Sonetto V G2 won the EISA 2025–2026 award in its category.

Olympica G3

The third generation of the celebrated Olympica collection, dubbed G3, is the pivot of the lineup. Launched in 2026 in three forms — the Olympica G3 I bookshelf speaker and the Olympica G3 III and V floorstanding speakers — it takes the asymmetric lute shape clad in 45° chevron veneer with machined aluminium mouldings. The collection draws its inspiration from the geometry of Palladian architecture from the Vicenza region. It is also the first tier in the lineup with a coherent multichannel offering: center and wall speakers tuned to the same sonic signature.

Homage: Amati G5 and Amati Supreme

Named in tribute to the great Cremonese luthiers, each Homage model bears the name of a 17th-century master of instrument-making. The Homage series is where Sonus faber's engineering and its homage to Italian tradition meet at the highest level. The Guarneri, Serafino G2 and Stradivari G2 form its body, but its summit belongs to the two Amati models.

The Amati G5 (fifth generation) is a 3.5-way speaker built around a 28 mm DAD™ tweeter, a 150 mm midrange in a sealed enclosure (Intono) and two 220 mm Stealth Ultraflex woofers. The Amati Supreme occupies the same cabinet but redesigns its interior with technology borrowed from the Reference Suprema model: 4.5-way, 20 mm super-tweeter with waveguide, widened 165 mm Dual Drive midrange, response extended to 40,000 Hz and power handling up to 600 W. Where the G5 is the culmination of five generations of a craft heritage, the Supreme is its projection toward the future.

Reference

The pinnacle — and the laboratory. Reference brings together the Il Cremonese, the Aida and the Suprema, three systems that push Sonus faber's engineering to its limits. They feature Avional aeronautical alloys, external crossover networks and unprecedented technologies developed not only to push the boundaries of sound reproduction, but also to eventually find their way into the rest of the product lineup. It was on the Suprema (2024) that the Voice of Sonus faber technology was developed — now present down to the Amati Supreme.

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