What processor? Difficult room with lots of glass


I need advice.
I added new family room and kitchen space to the house, and am anticipating challenges. If you can suggest solutions, that would be great. I am not going for an optimum outcome, but I would like to maximize the situation and its tradeoffs. here is what I have to deal with...

Room situation: ~500+ square foot octagonal family room with large glass windows on 5 of the 8 sides. One side is open and adjoins a reasonably large kitchen

Speakers and placement: Hopefully a Revel Salon2 L/R and center set-up (issue with decorator to deal with) plus 2 rear ceiling speakers. The front speakers will have to be quite close to the wall behind them, so thats a tradeoff.

Uses: Movies, general TV watching including sports, and some rock, blues, etc music.

Amps: 2 older, mono Krells and an older 2 channel Mark Levinson.

What processor/preamp or equalizer would you recommend? I would prefer something that has the ability to display on the TV display and is controllable via an iPad, but this is not a show stopper requirement. My ears have a few years on them and were punished by loud rock, so in particular voice clarity is important. Thanks
jimmymac928
"The Salons are serious power pigs and due to their relatively low efficiency aren't very dynamic (OK guys you can attack now!)"

LOL - no attack forthcoming, just some different thoughts.

Agreed as to power pigs - I wouldn't feed them anything less than 200 wpc into 8 ohms.

But as for whether they are dynamic, in my limited experience with them so far I found them a little bit polite when mated to their Harman stablemate Mark Levinson 532H. But when hooked up to my Plinius SB-301 and M8, they turned into different beasts altogether. Now they punch hard when I want them to and drum hits sound like, well, drum hits.

I'm not knocking the ML - they were super-smooth and quite detailed, especially in the high end, and some listeners will prefer that to what I feel is a more dynamic Plinius sound. My point is simply that even in a very limited comparison involving only two brands of power/pre, it's clear that different amps can produce different dynamic responses in the Salon 2s.

Also, it seems many dealers market the Salon 2s and ML together. This makes perfect sense as they are related brands, but their synergy may not be yours. So if possible, when auditioning bring your front end and amplification gear with you to see how it mates up.
These tips are very helpful, and very detailed. You guys are very experienced, and probably have better ears than I do, as well.

I auditioned the Salon 2s in a more standard rectangular room, and to me they sounded extremely tight and were distinctively good on defining each instrument. Also, bass drum and bass guitar were well defined.

I know that my room is far from ideal, but such is the tradeoff in life. Even though I know it will be impossible to achieve anywhere near perfection, I assume that better speakers will do a better job in any case.

THANKS