Sonus faber’s Homage Collection, side by side. Here is the Amati G5 at the top of the range alongside the Serafino G2 and the Guarneri G5 standmount, showing what your money buys at each step.

The Amati is the largest speaker in Sonus faber’s Homage Collection, named for the Cremonese family who effectively invented the violin as we know it, and the G5 is the fifth generation of a lineage that began in the 1990s. It is worth being honest about what has changed: early Homage speakers were sometimes accused of being too refined and too polite for music that needed air moved. The Amati G5 is not that speaker. It reaches to 28Hz, it plays loudly and cleanly, and it demands proper amplification. What it retains is the tonal beauty and the craftsmanship, nine layers of veneer under deep gloss lacquer, that made the name.

Brief product overview

A 3.5-way floorstanding loudspeaker with a 28mm high-power neodymium DAD Arrow Point extended-range soft dome tweeter, a 150mm neodymium midrange in a sealed enclosure using Intono technology, and two 220mm woofers with a Dual Drive Motor System in a vented cabinet using Stealth Ultraflex. Crossover points are 200Hz, 270Hz and 2.2kHz, using Paracross topology with high-end components in a phase-coherent design. Intono is the interesting part: a sealed midrange chamber is acoustically desirable but generates impedance spikes as internal pressure rises, and Intono’s internal architecture reduces that pressure mechanically, which in turn allows a simpler crossover with fewer components in the signal path. Frequency response runs from 28Hz to 35kHz, sensitivity is 91dB and nominal impedance is 4 ohms, with 50 to 450 watts of undistorted power recommended. Four binding posts allow bi-wiring or bi-amplification, and ZVT spikes ground each cabinet. It stands 1,176mm tall and weighs 61kg each, in high-gloss lacquer over lute-shaped cabinetry. It is made in Vicenza.

How it sounds

The Amati G5 reconciles two things that usually pull against each other: it keeps the warmth and emotional pull that made Sonus faber’s name, and it delivers detail, speed and dynamic range without the analytical edge that makes some accurate speakers tiring. The Intono midrange chamber and the simplified crossover it permits are a large part of why the midband sounds as clean as it does. Bass reaches genuinely deep, with measured extension to around 36Hz and port tuning at 32Hz.

The specification sheet’s 91dB suggests an easy speaker to drive. It is not. Measurement shows the impedance falling to 2.36 ohms at 93Hz, and Hi-Fi News observed that the combination of deep bass and high sensitivity comes at the cost of a tougher load than Sonus faber has typically presented. This speaker fully warrants its 4-ohm rating and then some, and system matching matters more here than the sensitivity figure implies.

What we’d partner it with

That impedance dip is the reason to reach for monoblocks. The McIntosh MC611 delivers 600 watts and, because of its Autoformer output stage, delivers that full figure into 2, 4 or 8 ohms alike, so the Amati’s 2.36-ohm minimum is met with the same authority as an easy load. A pair gives complete channel separation and doubled filter capacity over the previous generation, with 2.8dB of dynamic headroom. One amplifier per speaker also allows the shortest possible speaker runs.

The McIntosh CS7500 handles everything upstream, combining a full preamplifier with a network streamer so the power amplifier choice stays open. It carries a quad-balanced eight-channel 32-bit DAC, twelve inputs including HDMI ARC, and native Qobuz, Spotify and TIDAL Connect alongside AirPlay, Google Cast and Roon Ready certification.

For vinyl, the CS7500’s phono input is switchable between moving-magnet and moving-coil with five gain settings from 40 to 64dB. The McIntosh MT10 is the natural partner within the brand: a deck built largely by Clearaudio to McIntosh’s specification, with a 12-pound silicone-acrylic platter on a magnetic bearing, a brushless Swiss DC motor with electronic speed control referencing 1,595 strobe markings per revolution, and the MCC10 moving-coil cartridge fitted as standard, which the CS7500 accommodates directly.

On cabling, use a well-made speaker cable of appropriate gauge for the run, or two runs per speaker if you bi-wire; AudioQuest and Chord are the cable brands we stock.

Who shouldn’t buy it

If your room is medium-sized, the Serafino G2 shares the same Intono midrange thinking with slightly less bass reach and a more manageable footprint. If you want the Homage character in a small room, the Guarneri G5 is the standmount. And if your amplifier is not genuinely comfortable below 3 ohms, the Amati G5 will not show you what it can do, whatever its sensitivity figure suggests.

The Amati G5 weighs 61kg each, so positioning is a two-person job; fit the ZVT spikes to ground each cabinet. Give it space from the rear wall, as the woofers are vented, and experiment with modest toe-in. The MC611s are monoblocks, so you need two, ideally one beside each speaker to keep the runs short; connect each to the Autoformer tap matching the speaker’s nominal impedance, 4 ohms here. Run the CS7500 to the amplifiers on balanced cables. For vinyl, set the phono input to moving-coil for the MT10’s MCC10 cartridge and choose the gain setting that suits your levels. Note the MT10 does not include a dust cover. The four binding posts allow bi-wiring or bi-amping; otherwise leave the links fitted.