Sonus Faber Cremona Auditor old v new

I have not heard the Auditor M, but I agree you should be cautious. After the initial reviews I was very interested in the new Elipsa - seemed like a scaled down Strad, which I love. But when I heard them (driven by Chord electronics) there was good detail but none of the magic of the Strads or the original Cremona. We are keeping our original Cremona. My impression is that the new lines are more "modern" in design, which means more detail, more neutral, but less musical. Check out thread 1179827566 on the Cremona M. After comparing them, he ended up with the original Cremona. Seems to me that despite the good reviews there is very little discussion of SF these days. As a firm SF fan (I have 5 pairs) I am worried that the new lines may have lost the musicality that a lot of SF owners have loved and the company may be in trouble.

I must have been typing when Hulskof was posting. Obviously different views - that "warm" sound is appreciated by some and not others. But I think what he liked in the M is similar to what I heard with the Elipsa and did not like. So, we agree on the new sound, just not on whether it is desirable. I certainly do not think my Cremona are "sluggish, a bit lustreless and too laided back". But that is part of the fun of this hobby. Old Cremona's are thought by many to be sensitive to electronics so that may be some of the difference.

You def. have a point there, Dtc. One should always try at home with own gear. I think the person in the thread you mentioned liked the old Cremona better in the end because of his electronics too, that just matched better according to him. As regard to musicality, I'm not sure which Cremona would be better. I guess much depends on electronics again (amp, source), but I heard both on quite a few amps and cd-players, and each time the M was way better (imo of course). I suppose the old one does great things with classical music, but I like everything but classical (unless it's modern classical ;-)) and that's a whole different story. Speed, neutralness, detail... it's all much more needed then, and the M does a better job in all these areas. If this also applies to the Auditor I do not know.

The old Cremona's have a flatter frequency response...FWIW. Also please compare the Stereophile measurements for the old Cremona, and the newer Amati Anniversario. It is obvious that the old Cremona and the newer Amati were voiced by the same design team.

The newer Cremona's are a different story.

Also, please check the review of the M's in hifinews...the newer M's have a -6db extension of only 45 Hz or so, whereas the Guarneri Memento's have a -6db extension of 34 Hz. How can this be correct ?

Just some more information...I have not heard the new M's, BTW.

Thanks

Can you give some url's to back you up on this? It's hard to believe the freq. response of the old cremona's is flatter than the new ones. As a matter of fact, I'm looking at some graphics right now and see that the old cremona's have a bump of +3 db between 60 and 80 Hz, a dip of about -4 db between the 80 and 110 Hz, are pretty flat to about 1100 Hz and dive again from thereon (-4 db) to about 10.000 Hz. There they are flat again, until the tweeter starts to roll off at about 12.000 Hz. All in all not very flat. The new Cremona has that same bump at 60 Hz to about 90 Hz and is more or less completely flat after that. Quite a big difference if you ask me.
I don't have the url's at the moment (both are PDF files), so you have to take my word for it ;-)

The new Cremona has a -3db at 51 Hz, whereas the old one has a -3db at 45 Hz, which does seem a bit strange for every reviewer stated that the new one goes deeper and stays cleaner with tight taught bass. So I guess figures don't say everything.