If you know anything about Sonus Faber speakers, you know they are almost always prohibitively expensive. A pair of the company's top-of-the-line Aida towers runs for $120,000. And even though one review claims the sound coming out of these high-end speakers is better than sex, sex is still pretty great and (generally speaking) costs way less.
But now, without having to sell your collection of Fabergé eggs, you can afford a set of Sonus Faber speakers of your very own. The Chameleon collection, which is the company’s new entry-level series, starts at $500 for the Chameleon C center-channel speaker and ramps up to $2,000 for a pair of Chameleon T floor-standing tower speakers. There’s also a set of bookshelf speakers---the Chameleon B units---that go for $900 per pair.
These lower-end speakers don’t have the same number of drivers or sound-shaping knobs as Sonus Faber’s top-tier models, but the understated style (and much lower price) may suit a wider range of living rooms. They’ve got a modern look, with cabinets coated in real leather and drivers ringed with aluminum rims. And they’re still handmade in Vicenza, Italy.
The “Chameleon” name comes from the fact that you can swap out the sides of each unit with different-colored panels. You can pick from six color schemes to ship with your speakers---white, black, red, orange, blue, and gray---and Sonus Faber also sells standalone panels for each speaker style if you want a few options at hand. The company plans to release new colors and panel designs over time.
But all that is just aesthetic value, and Sonus Faber has an audiophile reputation to uphold. Each speaker in the lineup has a 1-inch fabric dome tweeter, but the specs vary from there. The bookshelf speakers and the center-channel unit each have a single 6-inch polypropylene cone driver for the bass and the midrange, while the towers ramp it up to a pair of 7-inch woofers and a 6-inch mid driver each.
They’re sold separately and you can use each of them as stereo speakers, but you can also team them up in tandem as a multichannel system. That’ll cost you, though: Buying all the units in the Chameleon collection would set you back $3,400.
And don’t forget the cost of that pricey amp you’ll want to pair them with: Sonus Faber recommends a 30W to 150W amp for the bookshelf and center-channel models and 40W to 300W of power for the floor-standing towers.
