Sonus faber Lumina II stand-mount loudspeaker

I’ve been revisiting Joni Mitchell’s album Mingus [Asylum] a bit recently and have been playing ‘Sweet Sucker Dance’ in particular, this is a relatively sparse arrangement of voice, soprano sax, bass and drums but given that it’s Wayne Shorter, Jaco Pastorius and Peter Erskine there’s plenty to enjoy when these musicians are given a bit of space to work in. Then you have the voice of course and that is particularly well served by these Luminas, something that became apparent across a number of tunes, that said I play a lot of instrumentals and these worked well too. One example is the combination of Indian and jazz instruments on Sarathay Korwar’s My East is Your West [Gearbox], which is a great live recording that abounds with energy when things get going. They really do this on the crescendo of ‘Malkauns Part 2’ when the ten musicians raise the roof in the reverberant church venue, and this worked surprisingly well on the Luminas. You can’t wind the wick up all the way but they do deliver a strong sense of the excitement and vibrancy of the performance.

This was also present in some Haydn String Quartets to which these Sonus fabers seemed particularly well suited; their ability to articulate mid and high frequencies really came into its own with the gutty sound of original instruments and the scale of the soundstage dwarfing the cabinets themselves. This might be a bookshelf speaker in execution but like many others, it works wonders where there is some space for it to fill with sound. In the Lumina II, Sonus faber has managed to deliver many of the qualities that made its loudspeakers stand out from the crowd back in the day. The size brings its limitations but those do not get in the way of producing an inviting and spirited sound.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

• Type: Two-way, two-driver stand-mount monitor with front-ported bass reflex enclosure
• Driver complement: One 29mm silk dome tweeter, one 150mm paper cone mid-bass driver
• Frequency response: 55Hz–24kHz
• Crossover frequency: 1.8kHz
• Impedance: 4 Ohms
• Sensitivity: 86dB/2.83V/1m
• Dimensions (H×W×D): 304 × 180 × 263mm
• Weight: 5.8kg/each
• Finishes: Walnut/maple, wengé/maple, piano black
• Price: £999 per pair

Manufacturer: Sonus faber SpA

URL: sonusfaber.com

Distributor: Fine Sounds UK

URL:finesounds.uk

Tel: +44 (0)1592 744710

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