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Revel Salon2, B&W 802 D3, or similarly priced speakers + Benchmark chain?

Ilkless

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KEF Reference 5 or even the Blade 2. I would consider a cheaper tower with multiple subwoofers to smoothen out the bass in-room given the budget.

Alternatively, a full Genelec coaxial or Neumann active setup + subs.
 

Shazb0t

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I have a sub which I have not bothered to connect with my Salon 2 system. There is more than enough bass and in the large room I have, together with EQ, room modes is not a concern either. The bass goes quite deep.
Are you able to measure the Salon2 on your Klippel?
 

anmpr1

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Are you able to measure the Salon2 on your Klippel?
Loudspeaker measurements are interesting to read. On a rather abstract level. I don't think they mean much to most consumers. However, for the manufacturer they have to be considered essential. But some speakers defy the usual measurements. I'm reminded of Richard Heyser (the man who channeled the god of speaker measurements, and the man who introduced me to how real loudspeaker measurements ought to be done). Confronting the Klipschorn he pretty much said, "How the hell am I supposed to measure this thing that weighs almost 200 pounds and is as big as a refigerator? Something so unique (but really something so old) compared to the typical box speaker?"

He ran it through his usual tests (simulating certain measurement protocols in order to tie it all together). His conclusion: it did some things good, some things not so good, a few things great, but nothing horrible. His final word on the speaker? If it has those qualities you like, and if you can afford the price of entry, then it's probably the 'droid you're looking for. If not, save your cash and look elsewhere. That was 1986. I honestly don't think things in Loudspeaker World have changed much since then. Only the names have changed to protect the innocent.
 

Dimifoot

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Your avatar graph looks very smoothed to me. :D

1/12 or 1/6 smoothing is ok for me but it would be interesting to know if graph is based on a single sweep or RTA pink noise MMM.

My avatar is an 1/3 smoothing MMM House Curve measurement, not an LFE measurement ;)

Are there other speaker options that sound better in the same price point range?
something that is expandable later to 5.1 would be a very nice option

Since you are considering building a five channel system for 5.1 SACD reproduction, I wonder if these are available in the States, and at what price:

https://www.me-geithain.de/en/rl-901k2.html

You can buy 5 of them (in Europe) for the price of a pair of 802D3+amps, and with 5X16in speakers you might get away without a sub...or not :eek:
 

countbasey

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i’m curious how studio2 might work in a smaller room near field triangle about 8 feet from chair and 6,6 feet across. room is 10,6 by 12,9 and 13 foot ceilings with a half wall opening behind my listening chair to the whole house. lots of sound treatments. current speakers are vivid 1.5 w f12g sub.

B38DDCDF-4E27-4848-A0DB-7F657B3AB92A.jpeg
 

Ilkless

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i’m curious how studio2 might work in a smaller room near field triangle about 8 feet from chair and 6,6 feet across. room is 10,6 by 12,9 and 13 foot ceilings with a half wall opening behind my listening chair to the whole house. lots of sound treatments. current speakers are vivid 1.5 w f12g sub.

View attachment 51260

Definitely something it could handle because the drivers integrate really well. But something coaxial like the KEF Reference might be advantageous nearer up.
 

Sal1950

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DonH56

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i’m curious how studio2 might work in a smaller room near field triangle about 8 feet from chair and 6,6 feet across. room is 10,6 by 12,9 and 13 foot ceilings with a half wall opening behind my listening chair to the whole house. lots of sound treatments. current speakers are vivid 1.5 w f12g sub.

View attachment 51260

Should be fine. One of the things I asked my dealer was about fairly close placement of my sides in particular as I was worried about the sound coalescing and Kevin Voecks (Harman) said they coalesce very near the speakers. I do not remember the numbers but it was much closer than I guessed, maybe 12"~20" but don't quote me on that. I do not own Studio2's, Kal can speak to that, but Kevin said the main concern was midrange transducers too far apart (one of my issues with B&W) and the Salon2's do not have that problem nor Revels in general.
 

Dimifoot

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Haven't seen a coaxial with that large a bass cone (16) in decades.
I wonder how it sounds ?

Subjectively speaking, I have heard almost everything in the market apart from the Dutch & Dutch, the Barefoot and the Hedds, but I will never get over the experience of listening to their bigger model (also cardioid bass) at a 5 channel demo in Munich.

https://www.me-geithain.de/en/ml-811k1111.html

For the available budget, only a pair can be bought.

ME Geithain are very highly regarded between professionals in Europe, I wonder if they are available in the US.
 

Sal1950

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ME Geithain are very highly regarded between professionals in Europe, I wonder if they are available in the US.
Just poking around and these folks say they'll ship world wide???
https://www.kmraudio.com/brands/geithain
Way out of my price range but I like what they're doing. Don't see too many pro speakers doing that kind of cabinetry work.
Nice

I was worried about the sound coalescing and Kevin Voecks (Harman) said they coalesce very near the speakers.
Got to be careful, me and the X were coalescing on the floor one night and knocked a stand mount down.
Hit her in the head, dang that must have hurt. LOL
 

DonH56

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Got to be careful, me and the X were coalescing on the floor one night and knocked a stand mount down.
Hit her in the head, dang that must have hurt. LOL

Was the speaker OK?
 

Bear123

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We also need to note the Smoothing info on the graph.
For the LFE-below 150hz graph, no smoothing is preferred

Too much smoothing can hide issues. Too little can cause one to attempt to over correct. I think REW automatically applies some smoothing to an averaged response. Either that or the effect of averaging simply results in a very smooth looking response. Not sure which. The response I posted is the average of six measurements across all my seating. No individual spot looks quite that good. I chose to have a really good response everywhere rather than perfect in one spot at the expense of the others.
 
OP
SplitTime

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I was able to make my way to a local store today. Thought I was going to be able to demo the Salon2 - but, apparently they’d had them on the showroom floor for over a year and hadn’t sold a pair. So, they reduced the price (30%) just to get rid of them at which point they sold in 45 minutes... yesterday. :facepalm:

I’d brought 10 of my favorite SACDs - covering a wide range of music to listen to...

I listened to a pair of F226BEs which they had hooked up to a ML SACD player & ML amp. The ML player kept playing the 44.1KHz CD layer on the SACD. The sales guy couldn’t get the player to actually read the SACD layer. Finally he had to stream some songs from Tidal - kept complaining about the ML app and SW interface. I thought the speakers played some content very nicely; but other content did not sound right to me at all.

Next up, 802-D3... that room had been torn apart. Sales rep hooked up a 100W/ch amp to drive them. Mid/Low-range sounded muddy (under powered perhaps?) - I’ve heard them sound much better using the same SACDs at Best Buy Magnolia centers - so presumably it was the amp.

Lastly I tried the Aerial T7. These seemed to play nearly all the content I brought well; however they weren’t as good as the other speaker’s on the content that the other speakers excelled at.

Guess I’m going to need to find some other locations to do more demos.

Thanks again to y’all for the feedback and suggestions!
 

Sal1950

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I was able to make my way to a local store today. Thought I was going to be able to demo the Salon2 - but, apparently they’d had them on the showroom floor for over a year and hadn’t sold a pair. So, they reduced the price (30%) just to get rid of them at which point they sold in 45 minutes... yesterday.
IMO that points to poor salesmanship. If they were able to sell them that fast discounted, means they had prospective customers for some time in the sales book but couldn't close the deal. :( It's not always about the price, but making the customer feel like he's getting value for is money. Too bad for the dealer, he's maybe just breaking even on the deal. :(

I’ve heard them sound much better using the same SACDs at Best Buy Magnolia centers - so presumably it was the amp.
Ouch, a bad failing for the first dealer. Sounds like another high end brick and mortar store will be going bye-bye.
A crappy postion for the customers, no where to hear the high end products before the sale. Looks like you'll have to buy a plane ticket now to review an expensive speaker at a dealer or go to a HiFi show whos rooms are always sub optimal,, not quite like I'd like to see it.
 

direstraitsfan98

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He probably didn't break even on them when you consider all the marketing and man hours they wasted setting them up, potential sales lost to a smaller, and better selling speaker... I reckon they would have made more money in a year selling KEF LSX then any ultima2 they could have hoped to sell. But it's possible that they just weren't able to sell the show pair, and sold plenty of brand new ones... unless he literally meant they couldn't even sell brand new ones... which would be very odd if you ask me.
 

DonH56

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I was able to make my way to a local store today. Thought I was going to be able to demo the Salon2 - but, apparently they’d had them on the showroom floor for over a year and hadn’t sold a pair. So, they reduced the price (30%) just to get rid of them at which point they sold in 45 minutes... yesterday. :facepalm:

I’d brought 10 of my favorite SACDs - covering a wide range of music to listen to...

I listened to a pair of F226BEs which they had hooked up to a ML SACD player & ML amp. The ML player kept playing the 44.1KHz CD layer on the SACD. The sales guy couldn’t get the player to actually read the SACD layer. Finally he had to stream some songs from Tidal - kept complaining about the ML app and SW interface. I thought the speakers played some content very nicely; but other content did not sound right to me at all.

Next up, 802-D3... that room had been torn apart. Sales rep hooked up a 100W/ch amp to drive them. Mid/Low-range sounded muddy (under powered perhaps?) - I’ve heard them sound much better using the same SACDs at Best Buy Magnolia centers - so presumably it was the amp.

Lastly I tried the Aerial T7. These seemed to play nearly all the content I brought well; however they weren’t as good as the other speaker’s on the content that the other speakers excelled at.

Guess I’m going to need to find some other locations to do more demos.

Thanks again to y’all for the feedback and suggestions!

Well, that's vexing... One of my local stores lost a couple of sales (a friend of mine and I) through simple discourtesy and unwillingness to shift speakers or electronics from a room to the one next door to compare them. Fortunately I found a really good dealer as a result but the other store seems to be more into whole-house audio and big sales guided by them. My ask was to compare Salon2's, B&W, and Focals in the same room and system (all in the $20-$30k/pair range). I did understand their unwillingness to move and set up those big suckers, and I told them so, but a subsequent ask to switch amps (two pair were on SS amps, the other on a tube McIntosh) was met with derision. I.e. "We set them up with the best amp for them, you don't know what you are hearing, you must not have a highly-resolving system now" when I was able to pick out the tube amp and wanted a better-matched comparison. I'm not sure about my friend, but when he went to listen to B&W they kept steering him to the cheaper stuff and basically told him they didn't think he could afford the big B&W's and wouldn't be able to tell the difference (what he told me; I was not there). He drove up to a bigger city and bought a pair of 802's (D-something, not sure if 2 or 3, few years ago) along with a new preamp and amp, a new TT and some other gear, about $30k worth! He was an older guy who was pretty blunt and dressed down so they probably took him for a hayseed. Pre-judging your customers is a bad mistake.

More on-point: One nice thing about Revel is they tend to sound similar up and down the line (I have heard from F36 to Salon2). As you go up they go deeper and play louder more cleanly, and the Salon2 moves to a four-way design, but you can get a pretty good idea from the F226Be what a Studio2 will sound like.

@Kal Rubinson, a member here, is a long-time B&W guy who recently incorporated Studio2's into his system. You can read his impressions in his Stereophile columns and reviews. He usually doesn't say much here, but is a sharp guy and a straight-shooter. He recently retired his column, much to my (and many others') dismay.
 

Kal Rubinson

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Floyd Toole talks about the "circle of confusion" that gets in the way of us knowing how to reproduce accurately what is on recordings. Dealers, too, can create another "circle of confusion" as they introduce additional uncontrolled/undefinable environmental factors in demonstrations, along with their own biases, implied or expressed. Finding a really fair dealer/demo is almost impossible unless you have an established and honest relationship with the dealer. I achieved that with 1-2 dealers before I began reviewing. It has become easier for me now but still not something to be presumed. Home demos are hard to arrange but they are important when we are spending relatively large sums of money and hoping for long-term enjoyment. It is probably worth paying for it, within reason.

What I can say is that I have had the wonderful opportunity to have heard most of the mentioned speakers, many side-by-side, in my home and those of friends. That allows me to be more certain about my choices and, although many others might have made other choices after such experiences, there was usually a consensus among those present. Friends who share an interest in audio can be invaluable.
 

Ron Texas

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Circle of confusion... We all have different ideas of what music is supposed to sound like. I'm not sure what to make of the concept of accuracy. What I know is Toole's research produced statistically significant, repeatable preferences. But, as evidence this world isn't so simple, some like panel speakers which don't fall into the preferred majority.
 
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