vander 5A, Revelsalon2, sf elipsa or magico v3?

Cal for sure is the weaker link. A great unit in its day. Personally, I don't think that matching brands btwn a digital player with your amp/pre makes any difference and would go for the player you "like" better, whichever criteria you use.

With your current gears I would vote for SF Elipsa. However, if you have plans of gearing towards the more current and neutral crop of components in the not too distant future, go Magico.

thank you Bvdiman. Can you please elaborate on this? Also, I just heard the Revels again and was impressed. They are also a lot less $$.

Jedhartman,
I found it much easier to get a pleasingly musical sound out of Elipsa. Although they too are pretty transparent to source, their tone colors (warmer seductive sound) somehow to me more forgiving of the various components we tried them with (at dealer's place). Even using a Pioneer DVD player as source at one stage, they can, and still remain musical.

Whereas, the V3 needed much more attention to sound their best (from source right down to amp and cabling). Thus, they are more fussy, revealing and harder to drive. In the 3-4 different set-up configurations we tried both speakers, more often, the Elipsa sounded better (in their own ways). However when we finally got the V3 properly dialed-in, they are in our opinion, by quite a margin, to be the better speaker overall--truer to source (transparent), quicker, more resolving, coherent and most importantly (to me at least) 'neutrally balanced'.

Thank you...I dont disagree that the SFs are musical and many recordings sounded excellent in my auditions...even those that are averageecordings....I have not listened to the magicos through Macs...but loved them through VTL....What do you think of the Revel Salon2s which I have hears with Mac and was very impressed...