0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic. Read 1570 times.
The Extremas have a very small footprint for their size and frequency response. Each factory stand is contructed with 6 discrete 3-1/4 x 3-1/4 x 21" square steel pillars welded to a floor plinth of 11 x 16 x 1/2" thick steel plate. The plinth is threaded for the factory spikes which are fully adjustable, even when the speakers are fully set-up and operational, (this is critical to final setup). The pillars are filled with a concrete composite which uses lead shot and sand as part of the mix.The speakers themselves are 27cm Wide x 55cm Deep x 46cm High (10-5/8" W x 21-21/32" D x 18-1/2" H on the baffle face).Allowing for an additional 1/2" for spikes makes the speaker with stand about 40-1/2" high x 10-5/8 wide (11"W at the floor plinth) x 22" deep (16" D at the floor plinth)The bottom of the speakers and the top of the stands have very thin sheets of stiff felt glued to them with epoxy . The felt to felt contact coupled with the weight of the speakers provides an ingeneous coupling method which is amazingly rigid and effective.The speakers weigh ~90 pounds (40kg) each, and combined with the stands which weigh ~110 pounds each, each speaker and stand weighs approximately 200 pounds.The original owner had the speakers in a room only 10' x 12' and they sounded marvelous.Personally I have had the extremas in three different rooms, the first and third setups were in 10-1/2' wide living rooms firing into an open concept dining room. The second venue was in a 12'x14' second floor bedroom. I was intimately familiar with the Extremas in all four systems and environments (I think my buddy finally sold them to me so I wouldn't live at his house all the time), and I never felt that the Extremas, once they were properly set up, were hampered by the rooms. Of course the larger rooms allowed the Extremas to be shown in a more spectacular light, but younever thought you were missing something in the 10 x 12 room either.One thing to remember, all the Sonus Faber Speakers were designed by Italians and originally for use in Italian and European Homes. In most European apartments and houses, a room of 12 x 14 would be an unusually large room regardless of the function.On the other hand, I have also heard the Extremas work surprizingly well in a dedicated 16 x 20 x 12 listening room, but I would doubt much larger rooms, or multifunction rooms (eg living rooms) as big as 16x20x12 would be viable.Here is a link for more information on the Extremashttp://www.mysoundroom.com/sfextrema.htmOne of the 'secrets' to the Extremas excellence is the fact that there is no capacitor used in the first order crossover to the tweeter, a very unusual design, and to my knowledge singularly unique (even among all other Sonus Faber designs). Much of the clarity and transparancy of the Extrema is due to the use of this 'sine-cap' crossover design used in conjunction with the Dynaudio Esotar tweeter, a driver that many consider the finest dynamic tweeter in the world.
