FONICA
Speakers
Best Known For
Speakers
/
Used Products
0
 Available
Average Price
$5,001-$10,000
Brand Popularity
547
 of 900+
Products Listed
4
Review Count
2
Founding Year
1945
Headquarters
Italy
FONICA
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

What's unique about the brand

Fonica International is an Italian maker of isodynamic loudspeakers, slim panels just 25 mm thick. Each one uses a Mylar membrane driven by powerful magnets, and the company says the membrane surface spreads sound widely across the horizontal plane, creating a very big virtual soundstage. Fonica holds patents on several of the technical solutions inside. The Flag Collection, which includes the Flag M, comes in three standard sizes, and the thin, minimal panels can be customized to suit the owner's taste and the room.

Our interview with the brand

What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?

What's your approach to customer support?

What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?

What other products pair best with yours?

From Julian's interview with
.

Products overview

Every Fonica is an isodynamic panel speaker with a Mylar membrane, which spreads sound widely across the room and gives a big soundstage. The Flag S is the entry model and suits small rooms or surround duty. The Flag M is a taller panel that reaches 50 Hz, so it fills a medium to large room, and it offers an active version with built-in amplifiers and digital inputs, so a source plugs straight in. LaGRANDE is the top, a 3-way active design with hinged modules.

  • Start here. Choose the Flag S if you are building a first panel system for a small listening room and want the house sound at the lowest price.
  • Sweet spot. The Flag M suits a buyer who wants an all-in-one system, since the active digital version needs only a music source, and it reaches lower than the Flag S.
  • All in. LaGRANDE is a separate class from the Flag models, and its three-way active design with dedicated amplifiers per band reaches down to 30 Hz, deeper than the Flag L, for a listener who wants the fullest bass.
Website author headshot
Julian Shapiro
ExtremeHiFi Writer

What reviewers are saying

We read all the reviews, and here's what stands out:

Quotes we liked:

Want to report corrections? Please contact us. We'd love to hear from you. Note that much of the data and summaries on ExtremeHiFi are researched after thousands of hours of loving labor. We archive our site's data and its pages on Archive.org and monitor for those repurposing the data. We also fingerprint data to know when text and numbers came from us.

Used

FONICA

Every month, we find the brand's used items for sale across the web and offline hifi stores.  We have the largest database of used hifi products. Search it here.

No items found.

Similar

Speakers

brands

Known For
Speakers
/
Average Price
$5,001-$10,000
Used Products
105
 Available
Brand Popularity
33
 of 900+
Headquarters
Italy

About the brand

Sonus Faber builds speakers like string instruments, with lute-shaped cabinets in solid walnut and other woods, finished in leather, and every finished speaker tuned by ear. The Italian company, founded in 1983 and based outside Vicenza, puts modern drivers inside those cabinets, and the Sonetto VIII carries the cork midrange chamber first used in the Suprema flagship. The house sound is rich and full without being tiring over a long evening. The Lumina series opens the range, and the Sonetto and Olympica ranges cover the middle.

Our interview with the brand

What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?

What's your approach to customer support?

What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?

What other products pair best with yours?

Website author headshot
Julian Shapiro
ExtremeHiFi
Brand Page
Known For
Speakers
/
Average Price
$5,001-$10,000
Used Products
1
 Available
Brand Popularity
409
 of 900+
Headquarters
Italy

About the brand

Opera Loudspeakers is an Italian speaker maker, founded in 1989. The Nasta family builds every speaker by hand in its Treviso workshop, using woods and leathers from local craftsmen. The aim is speakers that are easy to drive and comfortable to hear for hours. The Linea Classica covers bookshelf, floorstanding and center channel models, and the Callas line is the reference series, topped by the Grand Callas. A special Callas edition comes in coral-red Padouk wood. The Seconda can run as a reflex or a closed box, giving owners a choice of bass loading.

Our interview with the brand

What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?

We were started in the 80s by two audiophiles: a furniture maker and an English audiophile who took care of the engineering side of things. This combo permeates: Gorgeous Italian cabinetry and a serene, inviting English sound. Beauty and brawn.

We use third party drivers and cabinetry made specifically for us. Why? We laser focus on what we can uniquely do better than anyone else in hifi: integration, aesthetics, and sonics.

Our speakers are forgiving. They can give you detail and dynamics but will retain that beautiful, warm Italian sound that'll be compatible with poorly recorded tracks.

What's your approach to customer support?

What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?

What other products pair best with yours?

Website author headshot
Julian Shapiro
ExtremeHiFi
Brand Page
Known For
Speakers
/
Average Price
$5,001-$10,000
Used Products
27
 Available
Brand Popularity
146
 of 900+
Headquarters
United Kingdom

About the brand

Neat Acoustics is a British speaker maker, founded in 1989 by Bob Surgeoner, a performing and recording musician. Its first design, the Petite, got a big, natural sound from a small cabinet, and every model since has been built by hand and tuned by ear in England. Many Neat speakers use ribbon tweeters and isobaric bass loading, which pairs two bass drivers for deeper bass from a smaller box. The tiny Iota and Iota Alpha suit desks and small rooms, and the flagship Ultimatum XL10 adds upward-firing super-tweeters.

Our interview with the brand

What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?

What's your approach to customer support?

What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?

What other products pair best with yours?

Website author headshot
Julian Shapiro
ExtremeHiFi
Brand Page
Known For
Speakers
/
Average Price
$5,001-$10,000
Used Products
8
 Available
Brand Popularity
202
 of 900+
Headquarters
United States

About the brand

DeVORE Fidelity is an American speaker maker, founded in 2000 by John DeVore. Every speaker is built by hand in Brooklyn, New York. The gibbon series goes back to the first designs and keeps the cabinets compact. The Orangutan series raises sensitivity and impedance so that low-powered tube amplifiers can drive it. Many models use a wide front baffle, and the O/93 pairs a 10-inch paper-cone woofer with a horn-loaded silk dome tweeter. The O/96, O/93 and O/baby suit small tube amplifiers and are all on our Best Speakers for Tube Amps list.

Our interview with the brand

What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?

What's your approach to customer support?

What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?

What other products pair best with yours?

Website author headshot
Julian Shapiro
ExtremeHiFi
Brand Page
Known For
Speakers
/
Average Price
$5,001-$10,000
Used Products
22
 Available
Brand Popularity
198
 of 900+
Headquarters
Switzerland

About the brand

PIEGA is a Swiss speaker maker founded in a garage by Kurt Scheuch and Leo Greiner. It has built speakers in Switzerland since 1986, today by hand on Lake Zurich, and its house specialty is the ribbon tweeter, including the coaxial ribbon at the heart of the Coax Gen2 series. Cabinets are one-piece extruded aluminum, and newer models add TIM2 tension modules to reduce cabinet resonance. The Master Line Source 3 is a dipole line-source design. The Ace 50 Wireless has streaming built in, for owners who want a complete system without separate electronics.

Our interview with the brand

What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?

Our ribbon tweeters, especially the coaxial versions used in our Coax and Master Line models, deliver exceptional resolution and spatial imaging. What’s particularly noteworthy is that we have been developing these tweeters entirely in-house for over 40 years – and we still manufacture them by hand at our facility in Horgen, Switzerland. The quality is, in our view, outstanding – not only acoustically, but also in terms of technical precision and minimal unit-to-unit variance.

Our aluminum enclosures, combined with internal damping and sandwich construction, ensure distortion-free performance – even at high volumes – and are a unique feature both acoustically and visually.

What's your approach to customer support?

We generally recommend that customers first reach out to their dealer or national distributor for any questions or issues. These partners are trained and authorized to assist quickly and effectively. In more complex cases – or when customers contact us directly – we are, of course, committed to providing personal and dedicated support.

Additionally, we regularly invite customers to visit our headquarters in Horgen. During these visits – which include a tour of our production and personal consultation – very close relationships have developed, and in some cases, even real friendships have formed. We take pride in maintaining close and reliable contact, even after the purchase.

What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?

  • “Queen Mary” – Francine Thirteen: For dynamics and tight bass, excellent at high volume.
  • “Liberty” – Anette Askvik: For atmospheric depth and spaciousness.
  • “The Headless Horseman” – Bobby Bass: Great for vocals and evaluating seamless transitions between multi-way drivers.

What other products pair best with yours?

We experience excellent synergy with HiFi Rose electronics – both sonically and aesthetically. Setups with T+A or Cambridge Audio also pair beautifully with our speakers. And of course, there are no limits at the high end: just recently, I heard a large Burmester and McIntosh system driving our Coax 811 at a dealer – the result was absolutely stunning. 

Website author headshot
Julian Shapiro
ExtremeHiFi
Brand Page
Known For
Speakers
/
Average Price
$5,001-$10,000
Used Products
3
 Available
Brand Popularity
364
 of 900+
Headquarters
France

About the brand

Apertura is a French maker of loudspeakers and cables with about 40 years of speaker building behind it. Its most ambitious designs pair their drive units with a matched crossover built on the company's own filter technology, and the cabinets are designed to control standing waves. The Swing and Sensa were developed for small rooms, with a cabinet shape that keeps an optimal internal volume, and the Swing works on a stand or inside a bookcase. Owners of low-powered tube or Class A amplifiers also have a high-sensitivity model with deep bass.

Our interview with the brand

What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?

What's your approach to customer support?

What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?

What other products pair best with yours?

Website author headshot
Julian Shapiro
ExtremeHiFi
Brand Page

Search hifi products

Explore our database of 10,000+ new and 25,000+ used hifi products.