Sonus Faber Il Cremonese Amp Pairing suggestions

@craig Thank you very much for the thorough and well thought out response. Thank you for sharing your experience and describing the different results with different equipment. I have been extremely happy with Wireworld cables so far. With my current STR amp and SF Lumina V setup, the Equinox 8 OCC7N copper cables reveal a lot of detail and clarity. I find them to be tonally natural and all the instruments sound authentic. I currently run Silver Eclipse XLR from Preamp to amp and they do an excellent job conveying the source information. I'm considering moving up to Gold or Platinum eclipse for this jump in speaker quality to get the best I can out of the Il Cremonese. I will report back after I've tried out the new speakers.

I've owned several SF speakers over the past 25 years.  I've had a pair of SF Il Cremonese 7 years.  Until recently I used Ayre's KX-R preamp and VX-R stereo Amplifier with very good results.  Power & Speaker cables are Nordost Valhalla 2 and interconnects are AudioQuest Dragon [XLR].  I recently to decided to go "all digital", as I use my Aurender W20SE exclusively to play back music from its drive as well as streaming from Qobuz.  So 2 months ago, I traded in the Ayres as well as my Luxman D-10x SACD player for a Soulution 760 DAC / Preamp, and Soulution 312 Stereo Amp.  This change has been a revelation in terms of 3-dimensionality, soundstage width and height, and musicality.  I was also very impressed by the 312's grip / control on the bass [deeper and tighter than the "on paper" more powerful Ayre]. I am in the process of swapping the 312 for the more powerful Soulution 511 stereo amp.  

@at0310t Thank you for updating the post with your setup suggestions. I actually finally made a decision on my amp pairing in February and purchased a Burmester 218 stereo amplifier. I absolutely love the clarity, mid-range and vocal focus/imaging, bass control.... This amp has 275wpc with a damping factor of 1600 and demonstrates control of the entire speaker running full range. I'm delighted with the purchase and would recommend this amplifier without any cons that I've heard so far. I loved it so much, I added a Burmester 039 5 channel amplifier for my SF Vox center, Lumina V surrounds, and back channels. 

I'm running Wireworld Silver Eclipse 10 speaker cables with Platinum Eclipse 10 jumpers, Platinum Eclipse XLR, and Platinum Ethernet cable. The biggest surprise is the difference that Platinum eithernet cable makes. As good as everything else is in the system, the ethernet cable cleans up the streaming content to give an extra dark background with more subtle instrumental detail. All my power is cleaned with a Purtan PSM156, but the thernet cable cleaned up the digital signal in a surprising way.

I’ve owned the Il Cremonese speakers and they are excellent. I’ve also owned the anthem STR integrated. I think your anthem will pair just fine with the new speakers, at least for now. You will have plenty of power and my recollection is a nice, natural sound that should do well with the speakers. The speakers are very pleasing and musical, but I don’t think you want an amp that delivers even more warmth or softens the bass. Your anthem should do fine as you consider a new amp. it’s all very subjective, but I would think about something that is transparent and fast
 

@kerrybh I did use the Anthem STR amplifier for about 10 months with the Il Cremonese. Overall it did a great job powering the speakers as long as I set my crossover to the subwoofers at 80hz. That took the demand off the amp to power those rear firing subwoofers. Without doing that, it sounded lean. 

The difference between the Anthem STR to the Burmester 218 was tremendous. For 8 times the retail cost it should be though! I thought the STR allowed the music to come into the room and the vocal imagery was great. The Burmester 218 brought all the fine treble details forward to match the presence in the room....as if all aspects of the musical track came out of the shadows. All details are illuminated fully (Burmester) compared to partially (Anthem). The power and control over the fine details in the bass was another big improvement between the two. I can also run the Il Cremonese full range with the Burmester 218. I actually prefer the crossover set to 40 or 60hz when listening to Jazz because I hear way more detail in the bass coming from the Il Cremonese vs. the JL E112 subwoofers.

Overall, the Anthem STR did a nice job, but the Il Cremonese deserves something more capable to get the most out of them.