Sonus Faber vrs Magnepan

I love the Maggie/planar sound too. I've lived with the 3.6 and Duetta Sigs for 8 yrs now. Recently I needed a speaker for a smaller room. I went through alot of name brand monitors trying to find something that would work in this room. Nothing worked until I tried the Omega Super 3r. It's the model the owner, Louis, recommended for me. He's a Quad and Maggie lover also. I've had it a year now and am very happy with it. The Signums were on my short list as I heard they can work well in problem rooms, but I found the Omegas before I had a chance to listen, and I've always lusted after a pair of Guarneri's. Good luck.

Hi, I have Maggie 20's ,Divas' ,Extremas , EA1's and SC-V in house. All of the above listed speakers need to be at least 3ft out from the rear wall and 2ft from the side walls to really perform well in my room, which is 23 x 15 x 8. All of them love LOTS of power. Im using 4 x 1000w monos with astounding results. The least expensive speaker being the EA1, used for around 2800.00 The mg20 do a few things well, but imho, the Divas being similar in design principals, are better sounding...Sonus is romantic...Dunlavy sc-v is brutally revealing with the best dynamics of the lot. You may want to consider some of the smaller Dunlavys, to preserve your budget....

If you are opening your search, I have a lot of experience with the Dunlavys (Dunlavy is out of business, by the way).

The edge in dynamics that Sscot1961 reports for the Dunlavy SC-V is mostly due to the fact that it is the size and shape of a football player's coffin (great speaker, but HUGE).

The SC-I is an excellent monitor for the money, but has zero bass below 75 Hz.

The SC-II is much better and only a bit more costly on the used market.

I owned SC-III's for five years -- they are pretty much flat to 45 Hz. in all but big rooms and can go quite loud because each speaker has five drivers.

At the +/-$1,500 used price range, I think the Revel F-30 is more speaker (while they do a lot of things right, Dunlavy used cheap drivers and they fall short of the resolution and detailed presentation of the top speakers).

Good luck.

Hello,

Thanks for all the responces thus far.
I should also note that I am not just considering the SFs. I am will consider everything. The other speaker that I am considering is a pair of Focus Audio Signatre FS-68se. My speaker will probably end up being of the above two, but I will consider everything.

So if anyone has heard both the Focus Audio Signatures and the SF Signum I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts.

I will probably post another thread for people to suggest more options.

Cheers,
Nick

I had a pair of Magnepan 1.6 QRs on home demo. There were many things I liked about them, but they just would not work in my room. I ended up with a pair of Talon Audio Hawks, which sound very similar to the Magnepans (IMHO). I even had them in the store which sold the Maggies, so got to hear them side by side in the environment in which the Mgs sounded their best, and they still sounded quite similar. You can probably pick up a used pair for a reasonable cost. Look for a pair with the Bybee filter upgrade. At one point, I had a pair of Bybee and a pair of Non-Bybee Hawks in my house, and did a blind test. I preferred the Bybee'd version.