Rosso Fiorentino Arno20 Loudspeakers
ROSSO FIORENTINO ARNO20: STANDMOUNT LOUDSPEAKER REVIEW
Rosso Fiorentino is a brand known for producing some truly striking and original designs for their loudspeakers. With the new Arno series, they’ve produced something that still retains a lot of the spirit of their other designs, but with a rather more conventional form factor. The Arno20 is their entry-level loudspeaker, a 2-way standmount with matching stand. Jon Lumb takes a look at this standmount loudspeaker costing £5350 + £1150 for the matching stands.
I first encountered Rosso Fiorentino loudspeakers in the wild at the Munich show I attended some ten years ago. It was the original version of the Sienna (now replaced by a Mk2 iteration), being powered by Thrax amplification. Both the sound and the unorthodox form factor had me intrigued at the time, but this was well before my reviewing days, and their price point put them well beyond my budget at the time. My second encounter came at the Danish HiFi Show in Odder that I attended a few months back, where Morten was demonstrating the Arno40, the floorstanding big brother to the Arno20. Now, I could do something further with it, and Mark from Mana Audio kindly sent a pair over for me to spend some time with.
As part of the review, I wanted to get a feel for Francesco Rubenni. In much the same way that Quad revolved around the vision of Peter Walker, or Wilson Audio around Dave Wilson, Rosso Fiorentino is very much an expression of Francesco. I am very grateful to him, as this review was being conducted in the run-up to the first Vienna show where they had brand new products launching, and he was incredibly busy. He was still happy to put aside an hour for us to talk, and it was an absolute delight. He’s clearly extremely dedicated to his cause – for someone who grew up surrounded by the beauty (and weather) of Florence to come to Salford in the 90s must have been quite a contrast. But Salford was one of the very few places back then where you could go and study acoustic and electrical engineering, so that’s what Francesco did.
Trying to encapsulate Francesco’s approach in a paragraph or two is going to be like trying to nail jelly to a wall, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. There are no neat boxes that he fits into with easy labels, and other than a focus on making sure the integration of the drivers is as tight as possible, in order to make things sound as coherent, he doesn’t have a particular tick list of aspects that he’s focused on. The one label one can perhaps apply is that of pragmatist. He’s a very practically minded engineer at heart, and so he’s happy looking at all manner of different approaches across the speaker designs he’s made. One of the few points of principle I could draw him on was that he’s not a fan of first-order crossovers, based on the fact that no drivers behave well enough for him across their designated frequency range.
One thing that did catch me by surprise was when we moved on to the striking aesthetics of the Rosso Fiorentino models. His first point was that for him, in an ideal world, loudspeakers would be invisible! Obviously, that’s not a possibility (the pragmatic engineer strikes again), so making them beautifully finished and visually interesting became the next best alternative. I know I’ve painted a picture up to now about engineering, pragmatism, and practicality, but Francesco is still an Italian through and through, so it’s no surprise all the company’s speakers are visually stunning.
BUILD AND FEATURES OF THE ROSSO FIORENTINO ARNO20
The Arno20 is a 2-way standmount, featuring a 1″ silk-dome tweeter and a 6″ mid/bass driver. As is often the way, the drivers are Francesco’s own designs, which are then made by a specialist driver manufacturer for him.
It’s not something we tend to talk about a lot in HiFi reviews, but the various finishes used on the Arno series make for a really quite interesting tactile experience. From the website photos, you can see the leather front fascia and the panels of veneer down the sides, but it’s the other surfaces that really jump out. This is not a regular paint finish. The attention to detail here is also apparent – in particular, the fact that the bottom of the cabinet is covered in felt, so that it does not scratch or get scratched by the stands, or whatever other surface you choose to put them on.
The cabinets are a multi-material construction. In addition to using aluminium for the cabinet’s primary structure and rigidity, Francesco’s approach with the Arno series has been to use a variety of layers of material in the cabinet construction so that there is suitable damping across as much of the frequency spectrum as possible.
SET UP
Most of the work setting up the speakers revolves around constructing their dedicated stands. The construction process here is quite simple – plates are bolted to the central column, and then spikes get screwed into the underside of the base. There’s a channel in the rear of the column for speaker cable to run through, and that exits through the base of the stand to keep things nice and neat. Finally, the speakers themselves get bolted to the stand. One minor thing I have to note here is that with an all-black stand, and the standard cabinet finishes being primarily black, having a visibly silver-coloured screw head that’s visible from a standard listening position isn’t ideal. Swap for a black one, and it would blend in better.
Mark had warned me these were a brand new pair of Arnos that would benefit from some decent run-in time before any serious listening was done. I plonked them on my regular Custom Design stands, wired them up to a comparatively inexpensive BlueSound PowerNode, and let them go. I was immediately struck by just how good they sounded, even in this considerably sub-optimal set of conditions, which made the prospect of hearing them properly run in, and powered by my regular Electrocompaniet ECI6, really quite exciting.
SOUND QUALITY
One of the first albums I stuck on once the Arnos were thoroughly run in was The Seeds of Love by Tears for Fears. Right from the word go, and that first couple of hits on the drum kit, I’m blown away by the sense of space you get with sound. It’s that goddamned bloody HiFi cliché about notes hanging in the air, that I swore I’d never use in a review (that and any reference to inky blacks), but I feel like my hands are tied. As we progress into Badman’s Song, and some stunning rapid drumming from Manu Katche (I’m a huge fan of his playing), it neatly illustrates some of the really great qualities of these loudspeakers. There’s both a real sense of delicacy and timing from the hi-hats, and then a delightfully proper thump when the bass drum comes in. Even when the lineup comes in, and the track gets really quite busy, the Arno don’t miss a beat at all; everything sounds properly coherent and well-balanced.
Second up, we have Tape #1 Live – a particularly catchy album name from French duo Her. Her only ever produced a single studio album, as the untimely death of Simon Carpentier from cancer at 27 came before even their debut was released. Victor Solf has released as much as possible of the tracks they recorded together, and this Tape #1 Live is some of that material. Their music was very much driven by the vocals, and it is often the pair of them singing together. There’s an interesting mix of both original pieces alongside a few covers on this album. The opener is a cover of Sam Cooke’s A Change is Gonna Come. It’s a very stripped-back version of the track, with Cooke’s luscious strings arrangement replaced by a simple combination of electric guitar and piano. This really allows the vocals to sit front and centre, and they really are sat right in the middle of the stereo image. Quite Like was used as the opener on the studio release, and is the second track on the live tape. This track runs quite a bit deeper with a languid bass guitar played in the background. It’s a really rich sound, and that highlights one of the really standout qualities for the Arno20 for me; they have a lovely rich and full tone, whilst also having a superbly clear and present treble. There’s also a simply delicious cover of Nick Cave’s Push the Sky Away, which also brings a female vocalist into the performance. The singing is incredibly tight, but you still get that distinction between the voices, and the way the reverb hangs in the air (see, I’ve done it again) is something that makes me curl my toes in delight.
To give a bit of a contrast, I spent some time with Htrk’s album Psychic 9-5 Club. It often has quite a downtempo vibe, but the way they play around with very low-frequency sounds is really unusual. The Arno are rated down to 45Hz, which is a decent enough figure for a standmount, but I suspect they’ve also got the gentlest roll-off of any standmount I’ve heard, as they produce a really quite deep, low rumble. I have a little dedicated playlist of test tracks I use for doing initial evaluation of kit, and Chinatown Style from this album is on there. If you want to make the room shake to an unreal degree, this is definitely a track to do it.
QUIBBLES
We really are in quibbles territory with what’s going on here. The screws that fix the speaker to its stand do stick out a bit. Either having the top plate counter-sunk with an appropriate screw head, or having the current bolt option in black would just hide that out of the way. I also couldn’t locate any instructions for assembling the speaker stands. This wasn’t an insurmountable problem, but it did require a bit of thought to make sure everything was set up correctly.
CONCLUSION
These are a great loudspeaker for the money. They’re comfortable playing any music I threw at them, and do so with grace and aplomb. There aren’t really any meaningful faults to find with them, and the sound they produce is just an absolute delight.
These are comfortably a Five Heart loudspeaker, and they’re very close to a Reviewer’s Choice award. For me, a smidgeon more detail in the upper registers, and a little more outright low end oomph, and these would be right up there.
AT A GLANCE
Build Quality and Features:
Multi-material cabinet using constrained-layer damping of HDF, rubber and aluminium
Exclusive RF soft touch black coating with leather front fascia and side stripes
Dedicated S-A20 stand with marble microgranule filling and cable channel
In-house pure copper connectors plated in gold and palladium
Sound Quality:
Rich and full tone with clear, present treble
Excellent coherence and stereo imaging
Deep bass extension for a standmount with gentle rolloff
Value For Money:
A really lovely-sounding speaker
Exceptional build quality at this price point
We Loved:
Stunning build and tactile finish
Musical, engaging sound across varied material
Partnering flexibility from efficient sensitivity
We Didn’t Love So Much:
Visible silver screw head on stand from listening position
No stand assembly instructions included
Elevator Pitch Review: The Rosso Fiorentino Arno20 is a beautifully built Italian standmount that delivers rich, coherent sound with surprising bass depth, earning a clear recommendation for those seeking high-end craftsmanship at this price point
Price: £5350 + £1150 for the stands.
Jon Lumb
SUPPLIED SPECIFICATION
Type: 2-way rear-firing, ported stand-mounted system
Sensitivity: 87 dB SPL (2.83V, 1 m)
Nominal impedance: 8Ω (minimum 4.8Ω)
Drive units: 1 x 28 mm silk dome neodymium tweeter, 1 x 165 mm paper treated cone mid-woofer
Frequency response (±3dB): 45 Hz – 25 kHz
Crossover frequencies: 1.7 kHz
Recommended amplifier power: 50 W – 150 W into 8Ω with unclipped sound signal
Cabinet: Constructed with multiple solid layers of HDF, rubber, and aluminium using the Constrained-layer damping method for perfect vibration control.
Dimensions: Height 413mm (1145mm incl stand), Width 220mm (247mm incl plinth), Depth 342mm (385mm incl plinth)
Net weight: 16 Kg each
Cabinet finish: Exclusive RF soft touch black coating, Black genuine leather (front panel and side stripes)
Side panels:
- Standard: Available in Glossy Black or Natural Walnut finishes.
- Genuine Leather: A premium option featuring high-quality genuine leather for a luxurious look and feel.
- Custom Lacquer: A customisable finish available in various lacquer colours upon request, offering a unique and personalised appearance.
- Carbon Fiber: A sleek and modern finish made from glossy carbon fiber, known for its strength, lightweight, and stylish aesthetics.
