Sonus Faber Serafino G2

Homage is the collection Sonus faber built its name on: the Guarneri of 1993, the Amati of 1998 and the Stradivari of 2003, each a tribute to a Cremonese or Venetian violin maker and each cabinet shaped like the body of a lute so that no two interior surfaces are parallel. The Serafino joined the line in 2017 as the floorstander between Guarneri and Amati, named for Santo Serafino, the eighteenth-century Venetian luthier, and the second generation introduced in January 2023 keeps its format and dimensions while replacing the drivers, the crossover and the way the midrange is loaded. It is 1,091 mm tall and 396 mm wide, which is 85 mm shorter, 15 mm narrower and 27 mm shallower than the Amati G5, and it is the Homage model for the room in which the Amati would be too much.

The G2's midrange is the new 150 mm natural-fiber cone shared with the Amati G5, with a neodymium magnet system, a shorter and wider voice coil for more force and faster response, and a mushroom-shaped phase plug lined with absorbent material to settle the cone's own reflections. It works in a sealed chamber with Intono, a second tuned enclosure behind the driver that absorbs acoustic pressure in a narrow band just above the driver's resonance, lowering the impedance peak and the distortion that comes with it, so the driver behaves more like a sealed system at low level and a relieved one when pressed. The two 180 mm woofers have a new voice coil and a new spider material chosen for more linear excursion and deeper extension, and they vent through Stealth Ultraflex, the extruded-aluminum slats at the rear that form the exponential section of a low-turbulence reflex duct and stiffen the cabinet at the same time. The 28 mm DAD Arrow Point tweeter is the Homage reference unit: a soft dome whose apex is damped by a bridge that sits in front of it, suppressing the dome's center-cap resonance and shaping dispersion.

Crossover points are 200 Hz, 250 Hz and 2.4 kHz, which is what makes the Serafino a 3.5-way: the lower woofer rolls off at 200 Hz, the upper one carries on to 250 Hz where the midrange takes over, and the tweeter enters at 2.4 kHz. The G2 network is Sonus faber's hybrid design with hand-selected Jantzen inductors and ClarityCap and Mundorf capacitors and resistors, hand-soldered, and the published figures are 90 dB sensitivity for 2.83 V, 4 Ω nominal impedance, 30 Hz to 35 kHz and a recommended amplifier range of 50 to 300 W. The cabinet is nine layers of solid wood, grain-matched in pairs, pressed into the lute shape and finished with nine coats of lacquer in Red, Graphite or Wenge; the front baffle is black leather, the top and base are dark-grey aluminum, the speaker stands on two-section Zero Vibration Transmission spikes with isolating gel, and the grille is the string type Sonus faber has used since the first Guarneri.

Edgar Kramer reviewed the Serafino G2 for SoundStage! Australia in November 2023 with a Gryphon Antileon EVO and found deep, controlled bass with a slight mid-bass lift and "zero boom," well-separated vocals, an extended and natural treble he singled out for praise, precise placement of orchestral sections with good depth, and scale at high level without hardening; his one caution was the tension of the string grille against the leather baffle. Terry Ellis at Pursuit Perfect System (written August 2023, published January 2024) ran it on McIntosh and Audiolab amplification, heard tight, controlled bass "like having a small subwoofer in the system" once the speakers were on their spikes, vocals as the highlight and a sweet, unforced soft-dome treble, and judged the character warmer than a Bowers & Wilkins 803 D4 and smoother than a Gryphon EOS 2, with less explosive dynamics than either; he wrote that "I have not had one bad or disappointing listening session with them."

The amplifier matters here more than the sensitivity figure suggests. When Hi-Fi News measured the first-generation Serafino Tradition, the impedance fell to 3.0 Ω at 151 Hz and the equivalent peak dissipation resistance to 1.9 Ω at 272 Hz, in the band where the woofers hand over to the midrange, with sensitivity of 89.6 dB; the G2 is a different speaker electrically but the same format, and the lesson stands that it wants an amplifier comfortable into low impedances rather than a high wattage figure. We pair the Serafino G2 with McIntosh and Luxman integrated amplifiers from about 100 W, with Pass Labs, Burmester and Linn separates, and with dCS or Linn digital sources and Nordost or AudioQuest cabling; the Vox G3 is the matching center channel and the Gravis V or VI the matching subwoofer for a theater built around it. Rooms of roughly 4 by 6 meters to 6 by 8 meters suit it; below that the Guarneri G5 on its stand is the better Homage choice.

Within Homage the Serafino G2 is the step between the two-way Guarneri G5 standmount and the Amati G5, which adds two 220 mm woofers, 28 Hz extension and 91 dB sensitivity in a larger cabinet. Above the Amati G5 sit the wide-baffle Stradivari G2 and the Amati Supreme, and the Reference line, Il Cremonese, Lilium, Aida II and Suprema, begins above those. The Olympica V G3, priced just below the Serafino, offers a similar driver complement in a less costly cabinet; the Serafino is the choice when the Homage cabinet, the Intono midrange and the Amati's drivers matter.