Octave V70SE to drive Martin Logan Summits?

Jon-Where are you located? Your best bet is to find a dealer that will allow you to an in-home demo as there are very few units of this new model in the market. (We have customers utilizing the fantastic V70SE with both Dynaudio Sapphires and C1 but keep in mind that Tone Audio reviewed the V40SE on a pair of Dynaudio C4s with very favorable results!)

Cheers,

Tyler T. Mueller

Next Level AV-Chicago

Great integrated. Can't say regarding the ML's but the V70SE handles my C1's with ease and has tremendous authority with both the KT88's and 6550's. The black box or super black will help lower the noise floor and add a hair more authority. I have the black box too.

The V70SE is fairly new and I was told mine was the first one sold in the US. I bought mine on 9-13-2010 so there may not be too many V70SE owners.

Your Martin logan Summits is excellent speakers. However, its load at high frequencies probably 5-10 times greated then that at midrange. Thus your requirments for amplifiers must match this challange.
Buyer Be Aware

I second the concerns indicated by Stan and Dob about the impedance characteristics of the Summit. I've seen specs indicating that its nominal 4 ohm impedance drops to 0.7 ohms at 20kHz. That variation will make its tonal balance very sensitive to the output impedance of the amplifier, even assuming the amp can handle the load. I would not extrapolate from its performance with Dynaudio's, which have completely different (and much more benign) impedance characteristics.

I couldn't find specs on the Octave's output impedance, or damping factor (which equals output impedance divided into 8 ohms). That might be useful information if it can be obtained. Beyond that, I second the recommendation of trying to arrange in in-home trial.

Regards,
-- Al

I did a search on the Octave forum for Martin Logans, several Octave owners have tried them. ML Aeons seem to be a good match.
http://www.octave.de/forum/index.html

IMHO, if I could drive B&W N800's with Octave MRE130's, you should be able to drive the ML's. Make sure you do gte the Super Black Box though. It does make a difference.

Here is what I found on the Octave on the Octave english website about the V70SE:

"The V 70 SE, as all OCTAVE Amps, is based on the enhanced pentode configuration. This configuration ensures the absolute stability of the amplifier against the unstable impedance of the speaker. Impedance mismatch is without consequence, as the amplifier is stable down to a 2 Ohm load. An important contribution to this stability is the Single Impedance Output Transformer.

Power Output 2 x 70 Watt into 4 Ohm
Frequency Response 10 Hz - 80 kHz / ± 0,5 dB
Total Harmonic Distortion < 0,1% @ 10 Watt into 4 Ohm
Signal-to-Noise Ratio > 100 dB
Input Sensitivity 120 mV
Minimum Speaker Impedance 2 Ohm

Al,

I have chatted with you in the past about Octave products. Here is a link to the user manual for the V70SE with lots of specs:

http://www.octave.de/en/pdf/Manual_V70SE_engl.pdf

Ciao,
Audioquest4life