I thought there might be some interest in the background of the Olympus and its development given the discussion in the recent "JBL 250 Ti or Olympus S7" thread. This system was designed around the S7 which consisted of an LE15, LE85 and LX5. Bart Locanthi did the design work with the goal of a speaker system with uniform amplitude and power response. He designed the LX5 specifically for this driver combination and designed the original enclosure to contain a 6 cu ft sealed volume.
The S8 was later added at the insistance of Bill Thomas who wanted to showcase JBL's most expensive theatre component - the 375. Locanthi designed the HL93 horn/lens so that driver would fit in the very shallow Olympus enclosure. As one of the contemporary engineers told me, that horn is too small to properly load the 375 for a 500hz cross-over. The only reason it works at all is that the 375 is so powerful that it can opperate to a degree with no horn attached. The LX5 from the S7 was used in this system even though it was actually optimized for the LE85.
The original S8 was a two-way system that was quickly expanded into a three-way system when it became apparent that the 9 kHz bandwidth restriction of the 375 limited its appeal. The passive radiator versions (S7R, S8R) came about as a result of Ed May's work in developing a weather resistant speaker for outdoor use. The original LE8 based "Carnival" used a passive radiator to eliminate a the requirement for a port and thus sealed the driver motors and networks from the elements. Ed felt that this improved the bass response compared to the ported version and thus began the design of a passive radiator that would work with the top-of-the-line LE15A.