Anyone hear SF Venere's? Thougts?


Hello All,

I'm planning to upgrade my current speakers (Hales Revelation 3) with Sonus Faber Venere 2.5. I did listen to them and kind of liked their price/performance ratio. I heard them through Prima Luna Dialog tube amp and Nottingham spacedeck TT. Currently I power the Hales with DK Designs VS.1 Reference MK II. The set-up sounds good but I feel it's missing the mid-lower base (about 60-200Hz). Running hales through tube amp is a tough proposition because of how inefficient the Hales are.

My question is, would it be an upgrade/downgrade/lateral move with SF Venere?

Any thoughts are much appreciated.

Best Regards/Stay Well
livin_262002

Showing 3 responses by livin_262002

Thank you Daveyf and Freediver for your thoughts. Just ordered a pair of 2.5's, should arrive in a day or two. Will post my experiences soon.

Daveyf, my current int. amp (DK Design MKII) does have the power to drive the hales, so I'm assuming it would have no problem driving the SFs but should wait and see what the marriage between the two will sound like.

Freediver, my impressions were the same as your's. The sound stage was very well presented especially the depth which is lacing in my current set-up. These being front ported, I have a lot of placement options.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

Best Regards/Stay Well
Hi Mezzanine,

Thanks for a detailed opinion. I share your thoughts on how they sound when powered by a mid-fi AV receiver, I did try connecting SFs to my home theater receiver (an older Denon AVR 3806), they sounded dull. I have had the SF 2.5s for a week now, and yes they are very smooth on the top, the Hales were a bit bright. The other difference I noticed was the midbass (like the lower cello notes) pretty much didn't have any heft in Hales, the SFs do and of course as you mentioned the SFs are much more dynamic when compared to Hales

The Hales are definitely superior in the bass department but again the Hales go down to 33Hz where as the SFs go as low as 40Hz.

The build quality (and place of manufacture) are not the same as other SFs, but I think for the price, the 2.5s are great speakers.

As for the plastic like vibrations, I didn't hear that in my speakers.

So SFs with better mids and highs, for me are an upgrade from Hales :-)), the other thing I had in mind when I bought the SFs was the difference in power needed to drive the speakers. Hales are very inefficient speakers (and a sealed box design), when I auditioned the SFs, they were being driven by Primaluna Dialog Two (38 watts) and sounded gorgeous. They sound great with my DK Design VS1 MKII but I think I'll be moving to a tube integrated soon.
Hello Mezzanine,

Thank you. The Hales were good speakers but the SF 2.5 bettered them in the mids and highs. You're absolutely right, the Hales had a 10" Peerless bass driver and a 4.5" custom Vifa midrange. The tweeters were off the shelf Vifas.

The Hales mids were good but the presence was missing (could have been a bad match with the amp). The SF 2.5s are a little forward (but definitely not in-my-face) when compared to Hales but I'm liking that forwardness. I did have to supplement 2.5s with a Velodyne sub to get the lower notes. I used Organ music to set-up the sub's X-over and volume. It blends in nicely with the main speakers.

Also I just replaced my phono stage, a Monolithic Sound PS-1 with the HC-1B power supply with EAR 834p. The improvement is amazing.

Good Luck with your amp hunting for the Cremonas.