Sonus faber Lumina V Loudspeaker Preview

Sonus faber is a name that most readers of Secrets should be well familiar with. After all, you’ve seen several of their beautifully designed and great-sounding products reviewed on our website over the past few years. Goods made by hand in Italy don’t come cheap and Sonus faber’s speakers are no exception to that rule. But Sonus faber has worked hard to bring their products to lower price points and the result was the Lumina line released a few months back. Carlo Lo Raso reviewed the Lumina III back in March and found that the speaker delivered much of Sonus faber’s “house sound” for a significantly lower price. At the time, he wished the Lumina III offered deeper extension and a bit more fullness in the bass and lower midrange. Well, it looks like the team in Arcugnano took Carlo’s words to heart as we now have a new flagship in the Lumina range, the significantly larger Lumina V loudspeaker.

The Lumina V sports two 6.5″ woofers compared to the 5.9″ drivers in the Lumina III to deliver more power and fullness down low. Sonus faber has also added an internal lute-shaped chamber for the mid-range and tweeter to reduce standing waves like their more expensive speakers. Lastly, there is a new crossover modeled after the one in the far more expensive Maxima Amator.

I received one of the first pairs of Lumina Vs (serial numbers 003 and 004 to be exact) just a few weeks ago and have been breaking them in as quickly as possible. Even with the short amount of time I’ve had the Lumina Vs in my system, I can tell you that they deliver much of the essence of higher-end Sonus faber speakers at a significantly lower price. How close do they come to Sonus faber’s big boys? We’ll delve into that in my full review coming soon.