Revel Salon2 vs. B & W 802D vs. Wilson W.P.7?

My opinion is for the Revels...I had 802's and got rid of them, and know the Wilsons and won't have them.

I’ll bite. I own B&W Signature 800’s and previously had N801’s. Great speakers but power hungry as can be. I have run 700 wpc and 800 wpc monoblocks (at 4 ohms) with success. You need a lot of power for B&W 802’s and up.

At CES in January the WP8’s and Revel Saloon 2’s really stuck out for me. I only went one day but these were at the top of the heap. Both were very smooth (most speakers at CES were rather harsh). The WP’s were driven by about $100,000 or more in VTL gear and they re-tubed the amps for the WP’s. The Revels were in a small room not really set up correctly and were driven by a digital amp. It was a board maker who wanted to show off their amps. So, in my limited experience, you have B&W’s needing huge power, WP’s needing a serious front end (which seems to be confirmed by everyone who owns them) and Revels on a pieced together chip amp and a 1980’s CD player (I think it was a Revox). Go for the Revels.

All three of those are a LOT of speaker for the Lexicon amp. I'd either scale back on speaker cost and buy a beefier amp for the fronts, or at least know when in the future my budget would afford the ability to upgrade the front channel amplification.

We all can believe, and post, what we want, but for me there are a few things that have been said that don't match my experience...

...the WP 7 has a titanium tweeter which suffers from resonance problems that will drive you out of the room with grainy gear like this. Buy something with a mellow silk-dome tweater...

Why not replace the grainy gear if this is truely the case rather than mask it? I have heard silk dome tweeters plenty hot, it is how it is implemented. I have never had a resonance problem listening to the W/P 7's that gave me the desire to run from the room.

WP’s needing a serious front end (which seems to be confirmed by everyone who owns them)

Who are these people you allude to confirming this claim.

Wasn't it Wilson himself who "tricked" people at a show while demoing WATT/Puppy's by using a very inexpensive front end?

Anyway, I have owned 802D's and own WATT/Puppy 7's and the choice is easy for me between those two. I do not have experience with the Revels, but what I have read seems positive.

Briangrarcom: The Wilson tweeter rings between 4 khz. and 8 khz. as a result of a break-up mode occurring higher in the frequency spectrum. It is plainly audible to me and to many others, and has been commented upon and written about at length. It is most noticeable with music featuring string instruments.