What processor? Difficult room with lots of glass

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

"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.

Sorry, wrong link!

http://www.logitech.com/en-us/1225/8439

Well, as you said the glass is going to be a HUGE problem giving you tons of reflections that room correction will not fix, ameliorate maybe but it's not going to fix the problem, which is the room.

The Salons are serious power pigs and due to their relatively low efficiency aren't very dynamic (OK guys you can attack now!) I like the speakers and almost bought them ashen they came out, but even with sick high power amps they do not excite me, even for film where the dynamics can be massive but choose what speaker works best to you and your ears. They are a good/great speaker, just not my taste.

That said I am pretty versed in the AV preamp world having owned most all the higher end models.

The Anthem D2v does have ARC which is pretty good at opening up the sound of a room, but it is not my favorite processor, it has tons of video features and even will scale for anamorphic lenses if your HT needs this, but sonically it isn't my top pick. It is really good but their are others I like more both at (and above) it's price point.

The Arcam FMJ has a tubey sound but is a little loose in the bass and lacks some features but is pretty stable and very musical and could work well with the Salons. The setup is a little dated but if it suits your needs (sounds like it will) is a great piece except it doesn't have room correction nor notch filters so with your room might not be the best choice.

The Meridian 861 (v4 and now v6) are awesome, have room correction for the lower frequencies but due to their construction in two box units with the HD621 switcher do NOT send any information to the display, not even volume. This was a little bit of an annoyance for me when I had the v6 (the HD621 wasn't yet out when I had the v4) and it requires you to let your player convert the DTS HD MA and Dolby TrueHD soundtracks to LPCM which I don't like, but the sound of these are so liquid and smooth with excellent bass that is slightly warmer yet well controlled. The Meridian's aren't cheap but the company has continued to support 861 owners allowing them to upgrade to every new model. Yes, the upgrade costs you but if you knew how much $$ I've lost on AV preamps over the years, sticking with the 861 would have saved me a small fortune, or at least bought me a new car!

The Krell Evo 707 has an exceptional analog section (actually 11 of them I seem to believe...) and does have room correction. I did a lot of work with Brett D'Agostino (when he and Dan still were with Krell) on the firmware for this piece but due to a divorce had to sell mine before the room correction came out so can't comment on how it works, the Krell does have on screen menus and is very stable, albeit the biggest AV preamp on the planet, no kidding, it is the size of the Evo 900 mono's! If you want to go big, this is a great piece and sounds go good I didn't want a separate two-channel preamp when I had it....... Damn ex-wife!

Currently I use the Classe' SSP-800 and have had it for two years and have no plans of changing it. It is rock solid, sounds really good though not quite the Krell bass, it is tighter than the Meridians and way tighter than the Arcam but then again not as liquid in the mids and highs so a trade off. (I use an ARC 40th AE pre for two channel now so no worries there!) The Classe' also has notch filters that you can use to tailor the output to control nodes in your room, depending on exactly WHAT frequencies become problematic in your rather awkward room this could be a great way to calm down the resonance frequencies, it will take some work on your or your installers to get it set up but once done this thing has tons of flexibility and sounds really good, not to mention it is the sexiest piece of AV gear I have ever owned, and as you can tell, I've had a LOT of gear over the years!

Sure you could go with the Marantz, I love Marantz and have both the SR7005 and SR8002 still in my home and the 7005 powers my bedroom system but with salons and big mono's, you will want something a little further up the food chain than this piece. I have never personally owned or used it but while a big bang for the buck, it doesn't match the rest of your system.

As for iPad control, you can add that to anything with Harmony's Link for $99

http://www.canton.de/en/homecinema/movie/produkt/movie3005.htm

This will allow an iPhone or iPad to control your entire HT and is super easy to set up, unfortunately it doesn't allow use of RF but that is another story......

I would suggest any Pre/Pro with room correction. This will aid in the setup and then you can fine tune it to your ears from there. Depending on budget anything from Marnatz to McIntosh, I am using and an Anthem Statment D2v and have found the ARC within the unit to be very excellent at correcting my rooms issues.