The aim for the Sonora was to produce a loudspeaker to rival Sinfonia, but which is easier to accommodate in smaller spaces.

Almost from the first moment you play music, there is a ‘rightness’ to the sound of the Sonoras. Textures, timbres, pitch and spatial information are resolved so finely and accurately, it’s as though what you’ve experienced before has been an approximation. Instruments sound natural and real, it’s not just timbre, they have texture and form, pianos have an appropriate sense of mass and size, vocals are scarily real.

I’ve never heard my classical recordings rendered with such a natural sense of scale, form and structure. Sometimes, it felt like I could resolve sections of the orchestra down to the level of individual instruments, certainly it became much easier to understand what the composer was trying to do. The Sonora’s ability to organize, and keep separate, a multitude of interwoven parts, is unmatched in my experience, certainly at this price. And one aspect of that is the accuracy of pitch information.

There is absolutely no doubt the Peak Consult Sonora is an extraordinarily accomplished and musical loudspeaker. Their ability to resolve timbral, spatial, pitch and timing data is beyond anything else I’ve experienced and the results are uncannily real. They put the listener in front of a musical event, no willing suspension of disbelief required, and they do it without apparent effort or artifice. That also requires them to deliver on the dynamic range, too, and here they are not found wanting either.

Like many products as this capability and price level, the performance they are capable of requires and expects your attention to setting up, and the rewards when you do amply repay the effort involved. These may not be ‘entry level’ in any meaningful sense of the term, but they could easily be an end-game loudspeaker.

Steve Dickinson, HiFi+, February 2025