Sonus Faber speakers

I have not owned these two models but I did have a back-to-back demo of the Sonetto Vs and Olympica Nova IIs in the same room, with the same gear.

Based on that demo, I felt the price of the Olympica IIs would be very difficult to justify, considering how similar the Sonetto Vs performed. However, a potential bottleneck was the Arcam integrated that was employed in that shoutout. The Arcam is an excellent integrated for its price but one has to question whether the gap between these speakers would have been greater under different circumstances. However, despite the “mid-fi” amplification, I still expected a larger gap in performance. The Sonetto Vs were at least 90% as good as the Olympicas in my demo, with the latter having greater scale and output capability. Had they been priced the same, it’d probably be a tossup depending on whether they’d have to serve double duty for both music and HT. 

I was afraid of that.... I really like the way my V’s sound. I do notice when I get up around the 85 decibel level the speakers seem to run out and just grab more power from the amps in return for not much of a volume increase. 

Arcam integrated that was employed in that shoutout. The Arcam is an excellent integrated for its price but one has to question whether the gap between these speakers would have been greater under different circumstances.

Agree, all the better SF speakers I’ve come across love good current from a smooth sounding SS amp down to 2ohms that don’t current limit at all.
Tubes that I’ve heard are hit and miss with SF’s, unless they have 2ohm speaker taps, then the reduced wattage could be a problem.

Cheers George

Maybe I should consider a different direction loudspeaker wise ? The Forte 4’s ? Similar footprint size wise higher efficiency more dynamic as my musical tastes are all over the place.

@shwridsn50 

I own the Olympica iii. Never had the Sonetto’s however I LOVE my Olympicas. Very natural sound sounding speaker. I owned the liutos  before that and it was a night and day difference for me. The Olympicas do need some power to really bring out the speakers potential so just keep that in mind.