The Cremona line, 2002 to 2013

Cremona is the town in Lombardy where Stradivari, Guarneri and the Amati family made their violins, and Sonus faber has named its finest loudspeakers after those makers since the 1990s. In the early 2000s the company gave the town’s own name to a new collection with a simple purpose: to bring the shape and the manner of the Homage loudspeakers within reach of more people. The Cremona line ran for about a decade and was succeeded by the Olympica. Click a photograph to see it larger.

Where it came from

The Guarneri Homage of the 1990s and the Amati Homage of 1998 established the Sonus faber cabinet: curved sides that meet at a narrow back, like the body of a lute, built up from staves of solid wood and finished like an instrument. They were, and are, expensive to make.

The Cremona floorstander applied the same form to a simpler build. When Sound & Vision reviewed it in 2003, at $7,495 a pair, the magazine described it as very nearly the image of the Amati Homage, and as something of a price breakthrough for a floorstander of that complexity from Sonus faber. The deep hand-rubbed gloss of the Homage models gave way to a semi-matte finish; the lute shape, the leather and the string grille stayed.

It was still a cabinet made the slow way. Stereophile recorded that the curved sides were built up from 32 layers of maple, that the top and bottom were solid blocks of the same wood, and that the finish was applied by hand.

The models

• Cremona. The three-way floorstander that began the line. Stereophile’s Sam Tellig first heard it at the factory in Vicenza in the spring of 2001 and wrote about it in January 2003.
• Cremona Auditor. The stand-mounted two-way. As one British reviewer put it, the Auditor was to the Guarneri Homage what the Cremona floorstander was to the Amati.
• Center and surround models, because the Cremona was designed from the start to work for film as well as music.
• Cremona Elipsa. A larger floorstander with an elliptical cabinet, reviewed by Stereophile in December 2007.
• Cremona M and Cremona Auditor M. The revised generation, later in the decade, with new drive units and a more open, more exact balance. The M stood for “modified”.

What the magazines said then

“My aim is to arrive at a musical instrument.”

Franco Serblin, founder of Sonus faber, speaking to Sam Tellig about the Cremona. Stereophile, January 2003

“Surprisingly close to the sound of the Guarneri Memento.”

TechRadar on the Cremona Auditor M, review

Stereophile’s review of the Cremona Elipsa is still online, as is Sound & Vision’s 2003 review of the Cremona surround system.

How we came to know the Cremona

The Cremona and the Cremona Auditor are where our own history with Sonus faber begins. More than twenty years ago John Loranger, who founded Pearl Audio, set up both of them, along with the rest of the range of the day, on the dealer course in loudspeaker and subwoofer setup run by Sonus faber’s American distributor. He says it was there that he came to appreciate how magnificent these loudspeakers sound: natural, warm and rich, with a sweet, smooth midrange. The Cremona stood in our showroom from our early days.

In September 2025 John and Tara visited the Sonus faber workshop outside Vicenza and saw for themselves how much of each loudspeaker is still made by hand. The rest of that story, and the violin above, are in Pearl Audio and Sonus faber: more than twenty years.

What it led to

Tellig observed in 2003 that Sonus faber loudspeakers follow one from another in a logical sequence, and that each tends to stay in production for many years. The Cremona bore that out. It took the Homage cabinet to a new price, the M generation refined it, and in late 2013 the Olympica succeeded the Cremona M with something the Cremona never had: drive units designed entirely by Sonus faber.

The line from the Amati Homage through the Cremona to today’s Olympica G3 is continuous. That is the best argument we know for an older Sonus faber: the company keeps building on what it has made, so what it made keeps its place.

If you own a Cremona

Many Cremonas are still playing music every day. We are glad to help an owner with placement, with amplification, or with a look at the system around the loudspeakers. If you would like to hear where the line has gone since, we will set up a pair of Olympica G3 for your visit.

Start with a call

Call (503) 222-2599 or write to sales@pearlaudio.com.

See also: Olympica: three generations, 2013 to today · Pearl Audio and Sonus faber: more than twenty years · What amplifier suits a Sonus faber.

Violin by Giuseppe Odoardi, 1776, from the Artemio Versari collection, at the church of San Vidal in Venice. Photograph by Tara, 2025.Click anywhere to close The lute-shaped cabinet, sanded by hand in the Sonus faber workshop. Sonus faber photograph.Click anywhere to close A cabinet being sanded by hand at Sonus faber in Arcugnano. Our photograph, September 2025.Click anywhere to close