Which Amplifier for Sonus Faber Olympica 3 Speaker

For what it is worth, I enjoy my Concerto Grand Piano speakers paired with an Anthem 225 Integrated.

May not be in the same league with other gear mentioned, just an opinion. The GP's have sounded lackluster with some of my gear /cable combos.

The Anthem brought out the best as did Morrow SP4 cable.

My apologies if my comments were off topic.

Kind regards

George - the review is useful. Thanks. What has typically made SF hard to drive is not just the impedance but also the phase angle. The Miller report does comment that the phase angle is well controlled, so the speaker may not be as hard to drive as the impedance along would indicate. This would be consistent with the fact that the Cremona M is much easier to drive than the Cremona. And the Olympica is the follow on to the Cremona M.

I agree that I would be careful with a lower power amp, but the Miller comments seem to indicate that a monster amp may not be needed to drive the speakers.

Unfortunately, I do not know enough about the amps the OP is considering. The Hegel 300 is 250 watts at 8 ohm and 430 at 4 ohm. Does not double down but it may well have high enough current to drive the Olympica. I would not dismiss it, especially given the Miller comments.

That's what I said, out of the two the Hegel is the better option, but now that the test state the speaker is really a 3ohm design and has is a 2.6ohm load for the bass(100hz) and an amp sapping EPDR of 1.7ohms at 81hz
Then even this amp though it will sound fine, will most probably not get the best out of this SF Olympica speaker.

It sounds like the OP is into intergrateds, these two from a quick look I did would be better options for these speakers, and I dare say there will be many others.

Simaudio Moon Evolution 700i

Krell FBI integrated


Cheers George

I use the Luxman 590ax for my
SF Olympica 2 speakers. They sound excellent with this class A 30wpc integrated amp.

Although the Olympica II looks similar the lack of another bass driver could make it an easier load in the bass compared to the Olympica III.

The Lux 590 class A intergrated is a nice amp and it looks like it can push current as well, as from what I've seen it can do 30w into 8ohms and double to 60w into 4ohm and maybe double again into 2ohm.
This is the kind of amp that is great for bad loads, like the Olympica III and should sound great up to a given volume level because of it's low wattage.
See it's not really about the watts, it the ability to double those watts for each halving of impedance.

I think I said it before one of the best amps for doing this is the old 25w (yes only 25w) Mark Leveinson ML2 monoblocks, they can give out big current, as they double watts to 1ohm (200w)

http://www.wtconcept.com/levinsonml2/

Cheers George