Olympica & Tubes
 

Anyone running Olympica II or III with tubes? Are SF more like B&W in doing their best with lots of solid-state power or can they sing with 40wpc of tube power (not MC2301s or similar)?

Doing the Electa Amator III with tubes (a pair of MC275 MkVI). Sounds glorious @ 15 watts (approx 100dB).

In reading the spec's for your speakers and all the Olympica models it does not appear that they are very 'tube friendly', unless one has what I consider a 'high power' tube amp (such as your MC275 run as a monoblock). The Electra Amator III recommends a minimum of 35wpc and the Olympica line recommends a minimum of either 40wpc or 50wpc with their floorstanders.

I used Doshi Jhor monoblocks with my Amati Futuras. They put out 90wpc with massive output transformers. The mids and highs sounded great, but I was missing some bass dynamics, depth and tightness on rock and large scale classical. My room is pretty large though. The Pass Labs X260.8 amps worked much better in the bass.

I have the Olympia III's, ran with ARC ref75-se, for a year, they were great for mid range but came up a little short on impact. Switched to Ref150-SE and am impressed with system now.

I am currently running ARC VSI75 Integrated tube amp with my Olympic 3s and also find some lack in bass tightness and dynamics, I plan on trying a SS Luxman Int. this year......

My Oly 1s sound great with MC75 monoblocks and dual sealed subs. But I am in a room that is just 10X12X8 feet.

I'm guessing some powerful McIntosh tube monoblocks would be one of the pairings that would work well. Curious which ones people have actually used though.