Sonus Faber Venere 2.5 amplifier Recommendation

soundwatts

Conrad Johnson, Audio Research and Rogue Audio all are sonic matches for SF speakers.
If you are enjoying the CJ sound, demo the Classic Sixty/Sixty SE amp.
Keep me posted and have fun.

Happy Listening!

I had the 2.5s in my system on demo, and I found them to have a pretty prominent mid/upper bass bump that was tough to deal with.  Of the amps I've had in my system, Bryston was one of the better ones at controlling bass, but that would have a very different overall sound than your CJ.  I'd try pulling speakers out further and trying some bass traps before changing amps.  Best of luck. 

Thank you for your responses. I borrowed a friend's roguee audio at 100 wpc tonight. It did tighten the bottom end up but sounded less transparent than the cj and it's el34. Would prefer tubes but is this a speaker that needs solid state for best performance.?

I would say solid state power and a tube pre, would be the magic combo.

Matt M

soundwatts-

which genre(s) of Music do you favor? Happy Listening!

Jafant 

A wide variety. In heavy rotation now is classic jazz.  But listen to rock as well that is where things get more confused. Vocals on the other hand sound great.

Much easier to make vocals sound good. You know you have a good synergy when you can listen to western classical and rock music at moderately loud levels without hurting your ears.

I had the same problem with my 2.5's. I have carpet over wood suspended floors and had my speakers in a platform that was pierced through the carpet into the wooden floor. I'm a little hard headed and ignored a friend's advice of suspending the speakers instead of anchoring them to the wooden floor. I went to Home Depot and bought two 17" square ceramic tile and layed them on the carpet and put my speakers on them. Wow, what a huge difference that made. All the energy of the speaker was being wicked into the floor and not into the room as music. Bass is deeper and much more controlled. Dynamics went through the roof. Everything was better. 1.5 years until I finally heard my speakers for the first time. So... If you have wooden floors, find a way to suspend you speakers. If you don't... 

Zmanastronomy 

Thanks for the advice. Right now the speakers are in a room and the house sits on a concrete slab  and so do the speakers. Do you think I should decouple them from the floor? 

I don't know if it will better the sound or not by de-coupling from the concrete. But it will change the sound. I would buy the 6" ceramic tiles and buy some kind of foam or cut some thick carpet to put between the tile and the concrete. Just experiment and you'll find something that works. Good luck.
Dont give up on those speakers. They are very good and will respond to up front changes very well. They have a little bass hump at around 80hz, but it helps with rock. 

I also had the 2.5s on a concrete slab in a good-sized room and couldn't get rid of bass hump.  This bass issue has been noted by some good reviewers, and you can see it clearly in the Stereophile performance measurements...
https://www.stereophile.com/content/sonus-faber-venere-25-loudspeaker-measurements

The only ways I could think of to deal with this effectively, short of adding a sub (which is not a bad idea BTW), would again be to try bass traps or possibly some form of equalization.  Best of luck. 

I had a pair of Sf 3.0 and liked very much the way my Mcintosh MC 152 drove them (with C50 pre amp). Any decent to good amp should be able to get the job done with ease as I did not find them hard to drive.

Depending on your budget, at $2K a Conrad Johnson MF2275 should give you what you want.

Ended up with a rogue chronus magnum ii. Breaking in now .but so far so good

I have a pair of Sonus Fabers Venere 2.5 and found similiar issues controlling bass roll off. I have them a thick carpet laying on a concrete slab foundation. I corrected issues by going to my local granite stone company and had them cut and polish  2-16"x16"x1.5" 20 lbs dead weight per platform plinths and placed the speakers with the spikes protectors on platform with equip spikes and found not only tightening the foundation bass but had a great improvement overall on the mid range too!
I also bi-amp with a Krell KSA 250 on low and Audio Research VT 130 se on the high and all I can say was wow now these Venere's are really performing with a huge sound stage  and very black deep sound. Overall like a total different performance!

Enjoy music!

Sonus Faber and a Primaluna Dialogue (power amp or integrated) is absolute MAGIC!

Yes 250 watts pure solid state Class A on Lows and 130 Watts tube power on highs. Best I've heard to date on my system. I also have a Prina Luna Dialogue Premium pre-amp driving a analog active balance crossover making a perfect bi-amp setup! 
As far as the spikes I saw no good reason nor justification to the replace the stock spikes. Yes even though the granite stone plinths are dead heavy movement for tweeting the speaker placement helps tremendously!

Enjoy music!