Sonus Faber has announced Omnia, an all-in-one wireless speaker in the same vein as the Naim Mu-so 2 and Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin. (And if you’re wondering how it fares in that burgeoning market, our Sonus Faber Omnia review is now live.)
The Omnia is a compact, affordable and up-to-date take on the increasingly popular one-box system, a concept that the Italian brand dabbled with before it even started making the loudspeakers it is renowned for today (remember The Snail?).
The Omnia is, of course, streaming savvy, and also packs physical connections, amplification and speakers into its single chassis with the aim of being a convenient does-it-all system that doesn’t require much room or fuss. To that end, the Omnia has built-in support for DLNA, AirPlay 2, Google Chromecast, aptX HD Bluetooth, Spotify Connect and Tidal Connect, giving owners easy access to a wide variety of streaming services as well as their own libraries of local or networked music. Sonus Faber hasn’t created its own control app for Omnia; instead, it encourages owners to use the native music service apps they may be more familiar with.
- Read our Sonus Faber Omnia review
Living up to its name (Omnia means ‘prepared in all things’ in Latin), the Sonus Faber system also accommodates external sources, such as a TV, turntable or CD player, through its rear-panel HDMI ARC socket and a line-level and phono adapter dongle.
Inside its very Sonus Faber-esque wood and cloth grille exterior (which has a top-panel touch control system) are no fewer than seven drivers – two silk dome tweeters, two paper pulp cone midrange drivers, a long-throw aluminium cone woofer and two side-firing cellulose pulp membrane drivers – powered by 490 watts of amplification. These work together with Sonus Faber’s own Crescendo processing technology, designed to create a big, wide and immersive stereo soundstage from the unit by manipulating the phase behaviour of the speakers.
Having had the pleasure of Omnia's company in our test rooms this year, we are pleased to report that it gives its rivals a good run for their money, too – as you can read more about in our just-published Sonus Faber Omnia review.
The Omnia is available now in walnut and black finishes priced £1599 ($1999, AU$3495).
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