HELP B&W 802D or Revel Ultima Salon2

Jeffkad, there's plenty of life, musicality and slam in my system and I'm not experiencing the issues you discuss. What's your other gear upstream from the Salon 2s?

Jim, my sunroom is also fairly large and also has a lot of glass. When auditioning speakers for my new system in late October, the three best I heard were Wilson Sashas, Revel Salon 2s and B&W 802Ds.

I ultimately went with the Salon 2s. The Sashas sounded great in a controlled dealer environment (carpet, room treatment) - especially the bass - but I thought they'd be too shrill in my room with all that glass. They are definitely not a "neutral" speaker, let's put it that way, and in my environment a certain level of neutrality is necessary even for a bassophile like me. In your price range you might want to check out the Wilson Sophia III - it's similar to the Sasha with I would say a bit less dynamism and deep bass - and in any event I would try to listen to either the Sasha or Sophia.

I was frankly not all that impressed with the B&W 802Ds - they were powered by some nice Classe gear but the treble sounded a little forced. The mid-bass was good but it seemed to roll off quite a bit as it went deep. They didn't really seem to have the kind of punch I was looking for at volume, either - I don't blast music all the time, but every so often I want to put on something like Houses of the Holy, crank it to 11 and pretend I'm 14 again, and these just didn't seem the speakers for that. Overall I didn't find them engaging and just didn't get a thrill from listening to them.

Where the Salon 2s really impressed me during my dealer audition was in two areas: soundstage and dynamism. I didn't go in thinking I'd find those areas so important, but when I walked BEHIND the Salon 2s and still could hear a well-defined soundstage and great stereo image, well, I was beyond impressed. I also thought they were not only very dynamic, but very realistically dynamic: a Herbie Hancock grand piano solo recording with a surprising amount of dynamic range was rendered so effortlessly that when I closed my eyes, I was THERE. And this was despite the fact that I frankly wasn't that impressed with the ML 532H power amp/pre-amp combo driving the Salon 2s that I thought was lacking in low-end oompfif not extension. To be fair to the ML gear, speaker placement and the room may have had something to do with that, but I left certain I'd like the Salon 2s with Plinius gear better - which as it turns out I do, very much so.

I also felt that the Salon 2s would be more forgiving speakers for flawed recordings than the Sashas would.

You should know that my system is a dedicated stereo system and will not be used for home theater purposes. Accordingly, my selections were made solely for music listening, mostly classic rock (Stones, Who, lots of Grateful Dead) and some jazz. The sound you are looking for in a home theater setup may be entirely different than what I wanted.

Yes, they are close to the wall. Some reasons for that. One, the room is a mess with speaker boxes etc. that I have to put down cellar - which in turn requires some cellar cleanout action. I'll get to that after Xmas, LOL.

Also, while I may bring them more out into the room, I may still leave them spread out wide to the walls. I like the super-wide soundstage I get from wide placement, and I'm only really noticing bass nodes building up in a couple of areas to the rear of the room where no one would likely be doing any critical listening anyway.

Second, right now I'm going through the new 73-disc Grateful Dead Europe 72 box set. It's mixed from the original 16-track reels and so should have had plenty of bass throughout, but they kinda screwed the pooch on the mix on some of the shows resulting in less low end than there should be, so I've got the speakers parked in the corners for extra bass reinforcement. One of my buddies has run the release through a parametric EQ program to address some of the imbalances and I'm going to send a hard drive to him soon to copy his files and hopefully resolve the mix issue.

I do agree with Irv that they are best out into the room and off the walls, but I'm finding the trade-off of less than the absolute best sound in the "sweet spot" in favor of pretty good in a larger area to be worth it in my circumstance. I do a lot of my work in the room and don't like to be moored to one spot all day, so being able to move around and still get 90% percent performance in multiple locations is fine with me. And the fact that you can get them to sound pretty good with less than ideal placement to me makes them a more versatile speaker than the Wilson Sasha, which is a much more placement-dependent speaker system - I'd guess they would sound terrible where I presently have the Salon 2s.

"I wish I had a better descriptive vocabulary in the context of describing sound. Sometimes I feel like a person who like fine wine but who cannot express it. “This Chardonnay has the aromas of toasted oak and hints of vanilla.” Uh what? It tastes really good."

Here ya go - study up on this -

http://www.stereophile.com/j_gordon_holt/50/index9.html

and pretty soon you'll be slingin' it with the best of 'em!