Is the Sonus faber Nova Olympica 2 speakers better than the Olympica 2 speakers?
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- čas přidán 21. 11. 2019
- Sonus faber, the great Italian speaker company, introduced the Nova Olympica series of speakers in October, 2019 at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. After 6 years of selling their most successful series, the original Olympica was finally replaced.
Is the Nova series better than the original? In this episode, we go into detail about the cosmetic, structural and sonic differences.
To buy the Olympica II, click here: www.audioexcellence.ca/shop-o...
To buy the Olympica III, click here: www.audioexcellence.ca/shop-o...
To watch the original unboxing video, click here: • Sonus faber Olympica N...
Audio Excellence Inc. is a high end audio/video store in Markham, Ontario, Canada, a suburb of Toronto. We've been in business since 1991.
Check out our interviews with designers like Daryl Wilson of Wilson Audio, Paul McGowan of PS Audio, Paolo Tezzon of Sonus faber and others.
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Our website is www.audioexcellence.ca
Contacts: Adrian@audioexcellence.ca
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Jay@audioexcellence.ca
Thank you for such a great review!
Very detailed comparison. Tx.
The old Olympica looks so mutch better .
Just wanted to say how much I appreciate these videos. I’ve been a long time admirer of Sonus Faber. Love the design. Everything the company does is just beautiful. I’m auditioning the Nova Ii next week with the Hegel H390 so hoping that will be a good pairing. Thanks once again for the content your producing. It really is enjoyable and insightful. I wish you guys were in the UK.
Well had my demo today and initially was underwhelmed with the Hegel H390 pairing. The Hegel did certain things well and I’m not knocking it but it just wasn’t for me. I found that I was just constantly analysing the sound rather than just sitting back and enjoying the music. I then asked to listen to a tube amp and a Pegaso P50A was hooked up. I’ve never heard of this brand but was advised that the parent company is Analog Audio. The difference was astonishing! Really loved the Nova II’s with the Pegaso. I haven’t decided on my final purchase yet but was very impressed!
I listed to the IIs with a Devialet and the SAM program downloaded specifically for the speakers. Amazing. Also heard them paired up with a Perreaux amplifier. Unbelievable soundstage. Not only in width but an amazing depth and height. Worthy of an audition
Adrian, until I just looked on the TV, I thought this was a newer video! You should do more of these it was excellent!🤗😇😬 Also, good to see an older guy like myself still in excellent shape! Big Jay has nothing to do with me being fat put it that way!😉🤫🤔😁
Excellent videos, watched 5, just subscribed.
I recently bought a pair of Olympica II. They are really beautiful. I’m happy, but I have to say they’re quite difficult to place in my living room, they’d need a bigger place to sound properly. At least 3m in between, 1m from the wall behind, the listener should be at the same distance of 3m from each speaker with 1m behind from the wall, otherwise the low frequencies are ... too much.
Love it!
Just the video I needed to see. I agree the older ones look better. More classic Sonus look
I am seriously considering the Novas. Have you tried them with cardas cables? It seems a good fit if you like richness and wide soundstage.
I have compared the Nova and Olympia. The sound of Nova is faster, thinner, and more details. However, I think the sound of Olympia is better than Nova. Olympia is more sweet and more easy for long time listening.
How did they time align drivers? I believe that is why the tilt was present.
Thanks for the excellent comparison between the two. I own the Olympica 2's and for me there's plus points about the new ones such as the spikes, new design and they have the look of the Homage range due to the lines. On the Olympica 2's I love the leather up the front, top and down the back, there's alot of attention to detail. I think the error they made on the new one's is the lack of leather, they could have left it running down the front at least which would have broken up the wood, the top is nice but a bit plane. Overall on looks I prefer the outgoing models as I think the new ones look cheaper, still lovely though.
Some photo's of the internals would be sweet.
same price of the previous version?
B&W LEARN !
Incredible scale down...
The older Olympicas look much better in my opinion
What about sound quality?
Agree although there are aspects of both that I like. Older ones do look more luxurious though. 😊
Never heard these but if they sound as good as they look, the old credit card would take a big hit! 😎
I'm looking into getting the Nova Olympica but I like the looks of the first better tbh.
You want the new but prefer the old .. ? 🫤
Keeping the price the same means, to me, it cost them less to make when you compare the value of money today vs 6 -7 yrs ago. That may have come from production efficiencies or it maybe the removal of things like the leather was specifically to keep the cost down.
Wow that room has a lot of reflections
Adrian Low Yes, that’s why the reflections are in the lower frequencies. Those panels have a frequency response and shifts the room ambience. Rooms with no furniture tend to sound like this.
Leather deteriorates, I preffer solid wood
I also put the wood over the leather seats of my cadillac. And now I have coffee rings all over...
Thanks for the video! The old (original) Olympica was considerably better looking. As a long-time admirer of the Italian brand (and owner of Elipsas SE's), I have been, and continue to be, severely disappointed with the direction SF has been following in the last few years. I thought the Olympica (original) was the best overall design since the company changed hands. The leather top was very unique and distinctive, as was the vertical port. The new Olympica Nova looks ordinary and just plain cheaper in comparison.
Agree with you there. After their original owner passed away, they were taken over by a big conglomerate and that, for me, is the beginning of the end.
Would you say that Sonus Faber have a particular sound or are they a neutral speaker?
@@adrianlow2114 Hi Adrian. Thank you so much for your very detailed description of the Sound Faber sound.
I'm encouraged by the fact that the new range have a more accurate sound profile as that is exactly what I prefer.
I currently use Spendor A7 speakers which are lovely sounding floorstanding speakers but I feel the Oylimpica 1 would suit my room better.
Once again, thanks for your much valued input! :)
Mike.
eh. I like the new ones more. its all personal preference.
Some of new Wharfedale and Tannoy models look very similar to Sonus Faber. A boredom made in UK is a cheap copy cat of genuine italian hand crafting.
The original Olympica is wayyy better sounding, softer and sweeter.
Curious to understand why all of a sudden SF is no longer designing the new models with a pronounced rake angle, as was the case with most of the previous models. The new Homage line also has a "non-tilted, full frontal" approach. Just trying to understand how this improves the sound.
Esteban Medaglia the physical rake “tilt” was a physical time alignment of the tweeter and mid range. We can now align the timing within the crossover filers which achieves the time alignment for cohesion between the drivers. One of the benefits is we eliminate the rake angle and is more versatile for placement within the room while saving space with bit of a smaller footprint.
Tilted speakers can be very choosy and demanding when it comes to placement in the room. As long as the time alignment is sorted out thru the use of a sophisticated crossover, one can say there is no need for a tilt. Still, each speaker brand will have their own characteristics
heard both and the nova is a MAJOR improvement in sound
And the previous model was already perfect?
@@pjmvdbroek no speaker is perfect but the first version was very nice but the nova is a new level !
@@itsrecordingman It really isn't... there are slight improvements, but that's all. It's silly to say the Nova is a major improvement in a world where manufacturers are seeking out tiny improvements to remain ahead.
@@johnr2632 have you even heard both? if you have and you don't hear a difference well then you can be happy with what your hearing abilities are and enjoy a fatter wallet to boot.
We heard both back to back in the same room with the same front end. Both the wife and I preferred the original.
I think SF make some of most beautiful speakers in the world. However, the company logo is a bit overdone on the speakers, IMO.
Why or why not the tilt of these speakers?
It is a way to deal with phase coherence between the drivers and the listening position. Olympica Nova II - 3 way - has crossover frequencies at 250 Hz and 2,500 Hz. Imagine you play a key on the piano. The piano, tuned at today's standard has its central A at 440 Hz. So, play an octave below and you are at 220Hz. If the piano generated a perfect sine wave, then all the energy would go to the woofer and "phase coherence" with the other drivers did not matter. But the piano's tone looks very dirty on your oscilloscope. Each cycle has medium to very high frequency components. There may be a block wave aspect in it. And the vertical in a block wave has ~infinite frequency if we describe it in terms of a sine wave. Now feed this piano sound through the crossover filters and the energy is split to each of the drivers. The "sine wave" talk of electrical engineers is a bad approximation of what really happens. If you study Fourier analysis, then imagine that something like that is happening in the filters. So now a single instrument's "voice" is to be reproduced by three drivers and the energy is routed through different filters. These filters have a phase effect and these may actually be frequency dependent. Then the drivers are at different depths from the face of the cabinet. If we want perfection in wave forms, then it is important to bring this all in phase back together at the human ear. And in this process, we have to hope that dispersed sound and its (first especially) reflections do not wreak havoc.
Why is this important? Because of the human ear and the way we hear. The ear and brain do not implement a microphone with a single neuron into the brain. Instead, we have a tuned canal populated with about 20,000 pressure sensors, each registering at a different prime frequency. The ear/hearing system is much faster than the visual system and signal propagation between nerve cells relies on synapses, that, e.g. between neurons and muscle cells, rely on a chemical reaction. In many neuron to neuron propagation this is also the case. A small group of synapses works electrically, thought and this has less latency. I presume that these faster neuron-synapse routes are used in hearing and in that the left/right waveform and arrival time comparisons. To cut the long story short, what the brain does with all those neurons and fast connections is analyze wave forms and filter essential audio information from noise. This has been a survival mechanism for hundreds of millions of years of evolution. This is why we can hear where a sound comes from and why we can distinguish the voice of mom from dad or from potentially dangerous foreigners. And it explains why we can - eyes closed - recognize/identify the piano, cello and flute when all three play the same note as well as pinpoint them on stage. We have a "blind" spot in our ability to hear the difference, when blindfolded, between audio coming from our front or behind. When "seeing", this is not a problem. If people were born blind, then they can develop very sophisticated hearing - some can actually point out windows (smooth hard surfaces) in a room, purely based on what they hear.
While humans - academically lazy electrical engineers - cannot generally hear above 20,000 Hz, this is a misnomer. It is again based on pure sine wave-forms. And these do not happen in nature. In order to recognize mom talking high-pitched "motherese" at, say, two octaves above piano central A 1,760Hz, and understand what she says, we are using much higher bandwidth than that 1,760 Hz. In order to distinguish the instruments in an orchestra, playing around that frequency, we again use a lot more bandwidth. The challenge in audio is to get the waveform back. If you want to assess if speakers are "pleasant" to your ears, by all means feed them with music from electronic sources fed into multichannel recording and at some point mixed into stereo. There will be little phase coherence in there to begin with. If you want to assess phase coherence, listen to acoustic music recorded simply with two microphones and zero mixing.
We now have explained the "absurd" frequency range that nobody can hear - we need it to reproduce low frequencies of a wave form that requires the bandwidth because the wave forms we deal with in nature are not perfect sine waves.
And, considering all this, the tilt that disappeared in Mk II implies different phase behavior in the drivers, the crossover and/or the cabinet that removed the requirement for the tilt (that was a simple solution to a phase coherence problem in the first place and the alternative in designing Mk I was more complex electronics in the crossover with more bad side effects than positive cure).
13:45 for sound comparisons
SF Olympica Nova II £8950 in UK. Same with Magnepan & Klipsch loudspeakers. Have to pay double the price compared to our North American counterparts.
Incredible isn't it? We're in Europe for crying out loud!
Same price for the new one and I feel you see it. Looks like they cheapened out on tiny details but just enough so they can keep the same price. I like the older design much more...
I like old olympica since the looking is much better than the new one which looks so cheaper! Old one is present the best design of litaly in hand made speaker!
The asimetrical enclosure is to breake internal sound waves, the beauty of this speaker is top 10, but I would not buy them cause of the drivers, I preffer speakers that use components made by speaker components brands like Scanspeak, Dynaudio, etc because is more possible those drivers are going to be available in 10 or 20 years from now...my speaker which I design it because I am speaker builder use Vifa Woofer and Vifa Tweeter and now Vifa closed and I am angry about that, it's important to buy speakers that use components made by companies that will last many years because is our waranty to keep our speakers sounding like new over the years.
Congratulations to Sonus Faber in the beauty of design but I would not buy them because of the drivers.
what are you babbling about? sonus faber makes their own components. you cannot get better than that. if you need to build your own speakers then of course buy whatever component maker you want, but you arent exactly a customer that sonus faber is interested in having..
You are pretending something impossible.
Important companies because they last longer?
Kodak closed, simply as an example.
Leica is still here and it's a very well known but little company.
Buying an expensive speaker is a kind of a bet.
I bought Apogee, 27 years ago. Can't find good technical attention for them in the last years to take control of the tension of the ribbon. Tired of problems I went for the SF Olimpic Nova V.
Maybe I'll have problems in 27 years, if I'm still listening anything. Then, that will be the least of the problems.
I'll be happy to buy some new ones!
SF don´t use real leather. It´s synthetic leather. Reason for this is quality. You can not find real hide or leather with the exact same properties.
My opinion that the new olympica nova is look cheaper and lower cost speaker. The old olympica look more a high end product.
ARE the Sonus Faber Nova speakers ......
muy aburrido! y nada de respuesta de las cajas acusticas
What about the sound, enough of body showing
the sound is bassy and unlistenable
Which one are you referring to?
@@FJBx100 depends also from positioning and room.
IS the speakers better than...? Don't they teach English in Canada?
Sorry, but in my eyes the new one is ways more beautiful than the old one, it is organic, it is a sculpture, it is steady. Looks like it costs double the price of the old one.The nova is aesthaticaly a masterpiece, the old one not......
Interesting. My opinion is exactly the opposite.
@@estebanmedaglia4506 Yes indeed
Nova has more wood, it looks better
Nova all the way.
Overpriced. Your better off picking up restored big 1970s speakers that sound full and rich JBL, Tannoy, AR , Celestion, KEF & Imf.
You are kidding I hope!
@@jeffstrickling569 I am not kidding. 1970s speakers have a musicality and tone that once heard is sought after. Why do you think there is a market for remakes for Ls3/5a & Jbl Tannoy etc.
Nass Khan Funny what you are calling retro is simp h box. Modern drivers, crossovers, and materials. So yes keep thinking the demands for retro.
@@jeffstrickling569 What's yr experience in all this? Are you trying to tell me a well made speaker from 1978 such as a Kef 104 is not going to sound as good as some genric sonos box from 2019??? Write back and list your personal hifi equipment cos I have been into this hobby 40 years.
@@nasskhan4543 Love people like you first off I am an Engineer EE and ME with a Masters in both. I have a Simaudio 240i in my game room running the Mind2, Sonus Faber Sonnetto II and a Rega RP8. In my Office I am running Simaudio 390 streamer and preamp, Simaudo Monblock M400 Rega Planar 8, Roon Nucleus, Sonus Faber Olympica II. Not going to get into my home theater as it is all Simaudio . So yes I am say your shite from 1978 is not nearly as good as what is available today with engineering and technology. For the record I am not some punk kid I am 60 years old, musician and an audiophile. So keep your old KEF crap with you HK Citation. Keep living in 1978. Please do not reply could care less what you think of me or my gear.
Looks good, sound no good.
Why?