This Is the Best-Sounding—and Best-Looking—New Wireless Speaker
New tech meets ancient materials in Sonus Faber’s Omnia.
The Sonus Faber speaker.
Photographer: Stephanie Price for Bloomberg Businessweek
Since its founding in 1983, the Italian company Sonus Faber SpA has created speakers that highlight exquisite natural materials to look as good as they sound. Last year it even acquired its longtime collaborator, the De Santi woodworking factory. The new $1,999 wireless Omnia speaker is shaped like an elegantly minimalist barge—its “deck” is made of bookmatched walnut from De Santi and is embedded with touch-sensitive light strips that manually control sound inputs and volume. Elsewhere it’s mercifully light on gimmickry: no sensors calibrating the size of the room, no screen showing album art, no app to download. Plug it in, connect to Wi-Fi or physically hook up to a turntable, and the 490-watt system is ready to rock.
THE COMPETITION