Possible Desktop Speakers?

You'd need to get some really solid speaker stands. Think MapleShade? makes something for the Strada.

The Strada needs to be properly braced for the bass to come across. I found the desktop stands to be wholly inadequate for that purpose. Best if you can use the wall mount bracket which seems to give it enough rigidity for bass reproduction.

I know Al may give me noogies for asking (given the price difference).

Yup :-)

The only way it would make any sense to spend $26K for pre + power amplification to drive $2K/pair speakers would be if you envision ultimately upgrading the speakers to much more expensive floorstanders, or expensive monitors + stands.

That said, although I have no particular familiarity with Gallo speakers, based on their description I suspect those ARC components would do reasonably well with them sonically. I'd be cautious, however, about mating the Strada with most other tube amplifiers.

Due in part to their unusual crossoverless design, the impedance of those speakers, as shown in the first graph here for the original Strada, varies very widely as a function of frequency, and reaches difficult combinations of low magnitudes and significantly capacitive phase angles at some frequencies in the bass region. Given my strong suspicion that the speakers are designed with the expectation that they are likely to be driven with solid state amplification, the relatively high output impedance of most tube amplifiers is likely to interact with those impedance variations such that unintended tonal balances would result. Those effects will be fairly minimal in the case of the Ref 150, though, because (as with some other ARC amps) it has significantly lower output impedance than many other tube amps.

My one other comment is that you'll almost certainly need a sub (or two) with those speakers, given that their frequency response is specified as "68Hz - 20Khz +/- 3dB (in room with boundary reinforcement, speakers within 1 foot of wall)."

Regards,
-- Al

It seems to me that an integrated amp with high power/current would serve your purpose. ARC separates are overkill for a small desktop listening area. Unless you're planning for the future and expanding your listening area.
So many good integrateds out there.

Based upon the limited info you're providing your system doesn't make much sense. Matching the ARC preamp/amp with desktop speakers positioned as you indicated is something of a waste of performance. I don't understand how if space for floorstanding speakers is a problem how you could then justify the large area consumed by the ARC components? (In another thread didn't you have Brystons?)

If I were looking for a very high quality desk oriented system I would consider products from Magnepan, Gradient and Lipinski. I hesitate to recommend anything to you because I don't think you have a well developed sense of what you're doing.

BTW, what's you source component(s)?

Doggiehowser - yeah thinking mapleshade stands and I may do 1 woofer.

al- yeah I'm a goober and just thought separate amp and pre would be better performance wise. I also thought the arc 150 was the max wattage which I believe was the max on the speakers. I guess you don't match speakers and amps that way.

onhwy61 - yeah I'm kind of shooting in the dark even after lots of reading. I have space under my desk to sit the amps and 1 sub. Floor standing would sit in front of my desk and would annoy my wife that's why I really am avoiding them.