Speaker and amp advice needed

Thank you all who responded.  My room has walls on all four sides, and I usually sit about 2 feet out from the rear wall.  The speakers are about two feet out from the wall where the screen is in the front.

I appreciate the comments.  One thing I have learned over the years is that if I search for the "best" I will drive myself crazy, and it will take me forever to make a decision.  I do that when I buy cars.  In the meantime, you lose the time you could have been enjoying something that is 99% as good.  

So, given the advice above, it sounds like I should stick with the Sonus Faber line, and simply upgrade the speakers, look into room conditioning, and Audio Research as a possible amp.  Now that is about the number of decision points I can handle!  :)

Thank you all for your comments.  Really appreciate it.

Jonathan

BDW, some time ago I have changed the placment of the floor stand speakers in moving them about 1 feet closer to the listening position and away from the back wall. So, the pic with the speakers in the virtual system is outdated.

OP, do you have sloping roofs on both sides? And do you have two walls or one open wall on your 18ft?

If yes, your room is very similar to mine (which is upstairs, have a look into my virtual system). In this case, both floor stands and bookshelf speakers could work nicely for you. They do with me. I am sitting as well near the end of the 18ft side, open wall in my back.

What I had to do when moving in with my gear was concentrating on the placement of the loudspeakers, including some room treatment (using wooden crates for the vinyl records). I found out that sitting not too far from the large front speakers (about 6ft) is the ideal position for me. Especially small Jazz groups and femal voices sound very very nice to me in this room.

Sometimes, I am also listening to music using the bookshelf speakers being part of the HT system as surround speakers. Adding the sub, I had a great sound experience just a couple of weeks ago when ’tweaking around’ with my sitting position.

I can imagine that both kind of loudspeakers will work for you as well. BDW, your Olympica 1 should not be the weak part of your system if your room has a sloping roof.

Best, eagledriver

Sonus Faber + McIntosh = Good Match

Focal + McIntosh = Not Such a Good Match

Suggest you demo some different combinations of equipment until you find the right match for you. 

I own Sonus Faber Amati and previously Olympica. I can highly recommend the Amati. There is nothing too big about them, they are only 46” high. You can see them in my audio room in my virtual system. Focal are a very different sounding speaker and would not mesh with the rest of your speakers. Having the same voicing across your system for home theater is important and Focal / Sonus would not mesh easily.

About the amp… depends on how warm you want to go. I have all Audio Research equipment and find it really natural and musical with great midrange bloom… but still detailed. You will loose a lot of detail with MacIntosh. If you only listen to rock this combo is great. Macintosh is the muscle car equivalent in the audio arena… heavy mid-range and bass. One of the well known synergistic combos in high end is Audio Research, Sonus Faber, and Transparent wires, for natural, detailed, musical sound with great midrange bloom.

@rick_n +1, especially re the Focal speakers. If you love the Sonus Faber sound be prepared to hate the Focals.

If you're concerned about ceiling height and tweeter height, you might try measuring your reflections with REW and a mic. Or just try some room treatments on the ceiling and/or add a rug at the first reflection point on the floors in front of the speakers.

https://advancedacoustics-uk.com/pages/what-is-the-first-reflection-point#:~:text=Where%20is%20the%20first%20reflection,loudspeakers%20and%20the%20listening%20position.

I've auditioned the Amati's (previous generation) and the Olympicas.  Go for the Amati's, you won't regret it.  They do like power and the MA352 may or may not get the job done.  Heard the Amati's driven by the more powerful MA12000 and it was right on the cusp of clipping which was very surprising.  

The Focal Utopia's are fantastic, revealing speakers but the Focal house sound is the exact opposite of Sonus Faber IMO.  Good luck and cheers.  

Sonus Faber makes a great speaker. The chief designer was Franco Serblin. He exited and started his own company. His Ketema loudspeaker is one of the best dynamic speakers I have ever heard. 

You can put any speaker you want in that room. The only limitation is the ceiling height. If you want more realistic sound and an amazing theater experience you should go with a line source loudspeaker and add a second subwoofer and a two way crossover. Examples would be, the Magnepan 20.7 and the Sound Labs 645-8s or 845s.  If you check out my virtual system page you can see the Sound Labs 645-8s in a theater set up with four subwoofers.

Line Source speakers produce a larger more lifelike image and put you in the front of the venue. The are project power better which is why they are used at large concert venues.

@OP - that is quite a large room and definitely there is no problem using a pair of Amati's in it. I spent two days with a pair recently in a similarly sized room and they sounded absolutely fabulous. Obviously, you would benefit from a better amp as you suggest.

Acoustic treatments and room measurements should be done before you spend money on gear.

If you need help GIK Acoustics will remotely help with the room treatments. They did some great work on my small office.

Another option is this one. I know DSP is not always well received here but this guy can remotely make your room sound great. It helps if you are doing streaming from something like ROON or JRiver so that you can plug in the Convolution filter he would create for your specific setup.

Digital Room Calibration Services, Convolvers, Headphone Filtersets (accuratesound.ca)

Anthem also has a DSP based on their hardware. My suggestion for DSP is software based and not limited by the processing power of any audio hardware.

If you are running a HT you usually have room correction, so you shouldn’t have to worry about the speakers being too big, in terms of having too much bass.

With a simple room like that, check out AM Acoustics room mode simulator. Put in your room dimensions and it will help you not only visualize the room modes, but also help you keep your speakers and listening room away from the lowest modes.

My suspicion is you’ll have a few very strong modes in the lower 2 octaves and bass traps like GIK Soffit traps will really help cut and smooth that out.

The height of the room is rather small, so consider abosrbers in the ceiling between listener and speaker and/or below the beam you mention.