Rosso Fiorentino
SIENA 2

what they say ...

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HI-END Magazine

Paolo Aita  |    October  2016

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All the Colors of Music

 

From the Tuscan Hills ... a lesson in cohesion and musical balance.

When art is then combined with technology, excellence is guaranteed, as the best Italian tradition shows.

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Even the editors of high fidelity magazines have a heart ... This introduction is truly inevitable in this case, since many, too many are the memories of listening to and using these speakers. Forgive me, but this time I will also talk a little about myself ... The degree course I followed in Pisa is a branch of the Faculty of Letters.

 

The following topic is quite different, since most of it focuses on the history of art. My studies are one of ways to learn about Italian culture, since, at the end, you really know something more about the strange phenomenon called the Italian way of life ... a way of life foreigners learn to love. They often tell you that they yearn for a “Good retreat” among the Tuscan hills or the streets of Trastevere, surrounded by a gentle and elegant nature and works of art.

 

In these Tuscan Hills lies the loudspeaker factory of Rosso Fiorentino, and its location is a testimony to a dedication to Italian culture ... further confirmed by the names of the other loudspeakers of the "Tuscan House" ... the Fiesole and the Volterra.

 

 The atmosphere of the meeting that took place at the headquarters of Fidelity del Suono in Terni was so relaxed that I often had to remember and force myself to take note of what it was saying. This amicable and convivial dimension was happily initiated by Sergio Pozzi of Audio Graffiti, who I believe needs no introduction, as he has been bringing Spectral electronics and other gourmet audio to Italy for some time, and being in the field of several decades "he has heard of all the colors", and has the right serenity of those who value the quality of a device.

 

The team at the head of Rosso Fiorentino is made up of Claudio Certini, Mauro Ru-benni and by Francesco Rubenni who is the designer, and has to his credit an enviable experience of recording studies, as well as acoustic and electroacoustic studies in England. From his words I have happily learned that the name of his company is not the result of a superficial infatuation, born perhaps from some image learned here and there from the internet, wanting to give the impression of hand-made tools, a little sprinkle of art at random, naming his company with a name taken from the catalogs of furniture builders ... from sports car manufacturers ... no, none of this is the case. 

 

For Francesco, it was the love for the painter Rosso Fiorentino, renowned for his clarity and distinction that explains this speaker designer's love for elegance, and of a way of building and conceiving objects that are "all-Italian", and that stand for a form of expression specific to our Italian way of being. This is reiterated in all of his products, but it is brought to its culmination by the Siena, which is one the brand's two top speaker models.

 

As for the Siena's most salient technical features, it is a four-way, five-driver design, which is well known by enthusiasts. The L/R reciprocal speaker position of the Siennas must be remarkably close ... closer than you would think given their size. Since these loudspeakers tend to be precision instruments, the dispersion in fact is perfectly bound to the frequencies, such that the highs -- for the needs of accuracy -- are less wide than the lows and thus, without a certain care, the nefarious hole is created in the center of the scene. But do not worry :

 

These speakers do their job so well, that they can play even without being angled towards the center where the listener is . This therefore results in an exact scene, not grandiloquent, but above all coherent, with its needs clearly manifested to the listener, and this despite the difference of the registrations.

 

 

SOUND

The low frequencies, are neither swollen nor dark, so they can do little to mask the 'decompensation' related to the unusual placement mentioned above. For the distance from the walls, the usual indications apply : it is a pneumatic suspension, so the bass below 100Hz is rather wide and tends to darken easily. On the contrary, the frequencies immediately above 100Hz are quite dry, but nonetheless rich in color. 

 

I would add that this is a speaker with a reactivity and timbre that is quite "spot on". It is not dull like many devices that 'dissect a hair in four', but it also does not "spread and sprawl" all over the musical reproduction. What struck me the most is the feeling of complete absence of the enclosures.

 

With the Siena there is a coherent but above all unified sound beam ... one that communicates a feeling of great control and order. In short, a sound that sounds like it is coming from "something more than a speaker". What derives from this is the feeling that the high frequencies are much freer and more precise. In fact it is a surprise to hear the variety of percussions present in Oregon's 1000 Kilometers, where we have the exact rendering even of the size of the drums. It is a pleasure to listen to the great variety of sound palettes for each instrument ... just like the looking at the endless pigment variances of a painting, which furthermore will differ depending on the artist.

 

Ultimately it seems to me that the mission that Rosso Fiorentino set out to fulfill is Cohesion and the strict Avoidance of Colorations. It is a particularly well thought-out speaker design, which tames undesirable low-frequency anomalies, and seduces by its naturalness in delivering the musical message. A decidedly 'mature' project, which amazes given the young age of its designer.

 

CONCLUSION

The required cash outlay for the Siena is unquestionably very high. But if one considers that many high end -- and high priced -- bookshelves have smaller woofers and cabinets, are only two-ways designs, require the addition of one, or a pair of, less than visually appealing subwoofers ...  this price appears more plausible. 

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