Sorry Dan - didn't mean to offend. Just not my cuppa.

+1 Considering their size, the performances of the Cremona auditor M are exceptional and imo more impressive than the floorstanders but they need and love power and perfect set up

Dan, i agree but M Colloms is not whoever and he has a big audience in Europe especially since his publication is free of any advertising, his criticism of the Amati Anniversario in 2005 ( HiFi News )was really different
it would be interesting to have the opinion of Bill on the question....

Which question: Martin's journalistic independence or the Cremona Auditor?

Martin's independance, for me no doubt about the Auditor M excellence

I owned the original Cremona Auditors and really liked them, now own the Guarneri Mementos.

But, I heard Cremona Auditor M's "perfectly" set up in a Chicago dealer's showroom, driven by Naim electronics, and i was overwhelmed by their performance.

I've been working steadily for several months, trying to make my Guarneri Mementos sound as good as my memory of those Cremona Auditor M's.

What a great speaker.

Andy.......You did not offend me. I was merely offering my opinion of the Cremona Auditor's. I had not heard anyone before you state that they were disappointed in the Auditor's performance, which is why I was surprised.

as you Julian i'm still working with my elipsa to exceed the performance of my cremona auditor M in all the domains but I am still into the break in for the speakers but also the GAT and XV1-S

A number of interesting points here. Yes Naim and Sonus are a beautiful match, and not just the Auditors. I have heard many Naim/Sonus systems and they play quite beautifully together - to borrow a phrase from Alberto.

Perfectly set up is another point. We have used Auditor/Auditor M since their introductions to teach MASTERS. It/they are relatively easy to set up and will clearly show when you have made a bad positioning choice. Auditor communicates so clearly what is needed as your learn the the set up process and is for me, the best set up training speaker with which we have ever worked. We sell an awful lot of Auditors to MASTERS attendees who finally realize just how good Auditor really is.

Memento can be more difficult to set up than Auditor by a substantial margin. The higher pedestal changes some considerations as does the port tuning. Also rake is just as critical on Memento but the pedestal has no spikes. We have used business cards stacked at shows because of the precision you can get. Not ideal, but the correct rake is more important than the correct foot.

Your answer for the surpassing the memory of Auditor and any other compact monitor is on the water right now. Ivan may even have a picture or two :D

Elipsa can be a little more difficult to set up to the nth degree because of the 2pi baffle. The baffle helps to intergrate the mid to woofer smoothly but if you are not careful you can make a bass choice that thins out the bottom of the midrange while it brings the mids forward a bit. The mistake most commonly occurs when using female vocals to assess/choose the position before you have solidified and linearized bass positioning. Female voice is the biggest liar in audio - at least where speaker positioning is concerned. You need information that bridges the range through the woofer-mid crossover. You need to build on top of an extended, powerful, linear bass response to determine where the speaker needs to/can be for the rest of the spectrum.

Working carefully with Elipsa to get the bass right, especially the linearity, is the key to getting it to do the special things that Elipsa does. :thumbsup: