The Salon would appear to be better for the people who prefer wide dispersion.
Which, according to Toole, is the majority of people, and why he expected the Salon2 to beat the M2(as it did) in that blind test, despite the Salon2 being less flat on axis and LW. If I'm not mistaken, he actually lists "wider dispersion" as the second most important thing(after flat on axis) for predicting listener preference. The JBL M2 seems comparably flat to the 8c, so I'd be curious how similarly an 8c vs Salon2 blind shootout would go with a large sample size of folks. One advantage the 8c has over the M2(which I'm convinced makes a considerable difference, based on hearing the 8c) is the back wave cancellation to eliminate the SBIR.
Does anyone know of similar off axis measurements for the JBL M2(I couldn't find a stereophile measurement). I'd be interested to see how the M2's dispersion width compares to the 8c.
The wider vs narrower dispersion debate, and how it correlates to listener preference is really fascinating to me, and I do wonder how much listening in mono affects the outcome. I know it's quite controversial to question the mono vs stereo thing, but I personally have yet to see sufficient evidence to convince myself that preference between the two formats is
always the same, with zero exceptions to date(as Toole has said). I've also personally experienced 1 exception in the 4 or 5 blind tests that I've done(which makes it harder for me to believe that Harman has had 0 over the course of thousands of tests). Could be my exception is based on my inferior test methods(mainly way slower switch times), but who knows. I'm likely misguided, but at least this is my opinion based on the public facing data I've seen from Harman. It could be that Revel/Harman has private data that makes the case more rock solid.
If someone does do a Salon2 vs 8C blind shootout, I personally would want to see both a mono and stereo test, even if just to help convince my own brain that they really are the same.