Tours, Interviews and Book Reviews

The New Sonus faber Suprema – An Interview with Livio Cucuzza.

Sonus faber just unleashed a new no-holds-barred flagship loudspeaker system on the unsuspecting crowds at CES 2024. And it looks positively killer!

Over the recent years, CES has seen a sharp decline in the amount of high-end audio that gets exhibited there. There are a variety of reasons that have led to this situation but, occasionally, there are companies that still use the show as a vehicle to make big splashy product announcements. This year, Sonus faber decided to surprise CES showgoers, and the audio community in general, with the announcement of a new $750,000 flagship 2.2-channel loudspeaker system called the Suprema.

Yes, you read that right, 2.2 channels. Two tower speakers and two subwoofers (you can order just one sub if you wish), that are controlled and managed by an external fully analog active crossover. The towers themselves have internal passive dividing networks to address their individual drivers and you need to supply the amplification for both the towers and the subs. But honestly, we don’t know of another non-pro audio manufacturer that has put together such a high-profile integrated speaker/subwoofer system, and marketed it as its flagship no less. It’s certainly a radical move.

When we reached out to Sonus faber to get a little more in-depth information on the striking new system, they hooked us up with Livio Cucuzza, Sonus faber’s Head of Design and Chief Design Officer for the McIntosh Group. Livio was gracious enough to sit down and give us an in-depth walk through of the Suprema’s design, development, and what it portends for future Sonus faber product. So grab a coffee, have a seat and join us for our extended interview with Livio and learn some more about the new Suprema.

Carlo Lo Raso

A native of Toronto Canada, Carlo's interest in audio began at a young age when, unbeknownst to his mother, he started taking apart her numerous transistor radios to see how they worked. This desire for “knowledge through deconstruction” continued through to the family’s 8-track tape player, turntable, headphones, and speakers. Carlo subsequently spent a lot of time in his room. Toronto was a fertile ground for Hi-Fi in the 1970s and 80s and Carlo spent much of his wayward youth hanging out in downtown Toronto stereo shops, listening to all manner of gear and picking the brains of the various store owners. Through that formative experience, Carlo developed an appreciation for good music and good sound reproduction. Also, as a budding graphic artist, the aesthetic aspects of a given piece of gear became increasingly of interest to his eyes. It was at about that time as well that Carlo began purchasing “Audio Magazine” on a regular basis and came to appreciate, in particular, the writing and reviewing of the late Leonard Feldman. Later on, he was also influenced by the writing and observations of the staff at Sound and Vision Canada, helmed at the time by Alan Loft. Carlo graduated from Sheridan College with a degree in Classical Animation and was subsequently employed by Walt Disney Consumer Products for 10 years as a Character Artist and Art Director. Having become disenchanted with Los Angeles, he then decided to strike out on his own. Carlo started his own company and has been freelancing artwork, from his home studio, primarily for the toy and publishing industries since 2001. In 2013, on a bit of a lark, Carlo answered a “Call for Writers” ad from an AV website that he had been regularly reading for about 5 years called Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity. He had come to appreciate the website’s combination of subjective impressions along with the objective bench-testing available in several of the reviews. The “B-Team” must have been working that day because by some miracle he was hired as a writer and his first review for the site was published early in 2014. Carlo has been continually writing, editing, traveling, listening, and learning on the company’s behalf ever since. Carlo currently lives in Granville, Ohio with his wife, two sons, and a very old, but chill dachshund.