Sonus faber Duetto video review

Ready to launch? Even for well-established companies like Sonus faber, bringing a new product to market can be a fraught process, especially if that new product is an active loudspeaker that also does streaming. Doubly when this is the company’s first streaming active loudspeaker. The Duetto 2-way active standmount sees Sonus faber not only engage in the hardware game but now, thanks to DSP and streaming, it’s now in the software game. With so much to sort, launch dates can easily slip from summer to fall. Such a delay might be why a couple of technical errors made it into the Duetto’s press release.

The Duetto puts 100 Watts of Class A/B amplifier behind a 1.1″ tweeter — not the 0.7″ written into the press release and then (understandably) copy/pasted by hi-fi mag editors and online publications into their news stories
Behind the 5.5″ mid/bass driver sits a 250-Watt Class D amplifier – not the 205 Watts quoted in the press release, an error already multiplied by online news posts

It took a generous reader’s kind intervention and some double-checking via Sonus faber’s website during the video production process for me to correct those errors in my own Duetto preview.

Furthermore, before a product like the Duetto can land in stores, the factory must produce a very short run of samples with which the manufacturer exercises quality control and eyes up any last-minute changes. Common practice is to have a company representative on the ground in China to properly relay QC-related issues or minor technical adjustments to the factory owner and/or production line manager.

In the case of streaming active loudspeakers like the Duetto, the drivers, amplifiers and DACs will have been locked down months ago but between pre-production and full production, there might have been some wiggle room on, say, streaming functionality and cabinet finish. Only with those final tweaks in place can a full production run be commissioned by the manufacturer. What to do with those pre-production samples? Waste not, want not. Some hi-fi companies send them out to some reviewers for early press coverage.

I am not one of those reviewers. I don’t review pre-production samples because I prefer to test what the high street customer will buy. With the Duetto, it would take some odd behaviour from the HDMI eARC input and my Samsung ‘The Frame’ (2022) TV and the ensuing troubleshooting email exchange to uncover that my pair was, in fact, a pre-production pair with ‘alternative’ firmware (that could not be updated over the air). Had Darko.Audio cameraman Olaf (and I) not already dedicated 12 hours to b-roll shooting and had we another video in parallel production, I would have paused the Sonus faber review then and there.

The upshot is that Sonus faber has agreed to dispatch a retail-ready pair of Duetto for me to see if the production firmware eradicates the Samsung TV’s audio glitches. If the Italians also send out the Duetto’s matching stands (€749/pair) which, according to the press release, will offer proper cable management when they begin shipping in December, any follow-up video from yours truly will have to be squeezed into the schedule at the very end of 2023.

🎥 Camera: John Darko / Olaf von Voss
🎬 Editor: John Darko
🌈 Colour: Olaf von Voss
🕺🏻 Motion GFX: John Darko
💰 Ad segment: Jana Dagdagan

🎵 Song IDs? Playlists of all music heard in this video – and other videos – can be found on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/johndarko

Further information: Sonus faber