Another voice - Having powered mine with Mark Levinson and a McIntosh 452 amplifier (450 watts per channel) I decided to go tube. McIntosh 275 (75 watts) and am extremely happy. I still have the ML but the tubes are permanently connected. Rock to Jazz listener. IF you are trying to recreate the complete dynamics of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite then yes >300 watts would be recommended but I never, ever, listen that loud so spent that $ on more records :-)

The issue is how loud you want to play, how far away you are from the speakers and how they interact with your room.

You know you need to double power to get a 3 dB increase in SPL. So if you are are 90 dB with 100 watts you need 400 watts to get to 96dB (just an example, haven't done any real calculations using the Salon2 efficiency rating).

In order to play clean (no clipping of the amp) and loud with very dynamic material, you might need more watts than someone else in a smaller room who doesn't listen as loud.

It sucks to pay for more watts than you need, but you won't know if 150 watts is enough until you try it out. If you get the speakers, try to find some amps you can borrow or rent to see how much power you need.

I have Revel F208's driven by a Bryston 3B SST2 (150W). Plays as loud as I can handle.

If I bought Salon2's, I would have gone with a Bryston 4B SST2 or 4B3 (300 W).

Then there is this: https://www.crownaudio.com/how-much-amplifier-power

And this: http://myhometheater.homestead.com/splcalculator.html

My Ayre VX-5s at 175 into 8 and 350 into 4 have oodles of power to drive the Salons to crazy heights. Unless you want to listen to them from two blocks away, the Ayre is just beautiful.

The Salon2's really have my attention, and the more I read/hear about them the more I'm interested.

I unboxed my new Salon2’s this week and connected them to my ATI Signature 6007 amplifier. First, the 300 watts are more than enough, so I found what others in this thread already mentioned- these speakers are not extraordinarily hard to drive.

Beyond that I’ll hold my comments as I’m still working on placement and settings, so they’ve not yet benefited from basic necessary setup tweaks. Also, I’ve not had a system deployed for almost a year while refurbishing a foreclosed home. Thus, comparison to my B&W 800 D2’s can’t be done thoroughly. So far, I like what I’m hearing!

Are you planning on drive them Salon's with the ATI or will you end up with the 536 monos?

I will end up driving them with the 536’s, but their so damn heavy I don’t want to unbox them until I decide on the location and stands to be used. I miss them dearly though! I’ll probably accept that I have to deal with handling them multiple times so that I can enjoy them again, NOW!

I have been driving my Studio2s with a 200W McIntosh integrated. I use the 4 ohm taps and they sound magical. At high levels (loud enough to not want to go for long) the meters tend to camp in the upper third. This begs the question of whether more power would open them up a bit more.

That said, 95 percent of the time I listen at mid level to fairly loud, not shake the neighbor's windows loud. At these levels the meters are comfortably distant from the pegs, and the sound is effortless.

I think I mentioned on another thread/forum my hegel h360, 250w8 /425w4 is doing a great job tho not as full sounding as the 536 mono's I demo'd them on.

My 450 watt MC450 seems plenty adequate but if 70 dB or more of steady state dynamic range is desired, it would take more power from the amp and probably more sensitivity from the speakers. That is if one wanted to avoid the onset of dynamic compression. For vinyl playback, such a quest would be pointless but if you use a source or source material (rather unlikely) with more than 70dB of dynamic range, I can say from experience that 450 watts won't cut it. It's likely such a desire would best be met by a speaker other than the Salon2s as they start to go into compression at about 95dB SPL (IIRC) according to the charts published by the NRC. This doesn't mean they won't play louder, rather that the output of the transducer becomes less linear above that level as measured using the NRC's testing protocols. In practice I haven't found this to be a limitation. I never bump into my system's limits when listening to the material I prefer. I think, assuming you have the power, the Revels do loud better than most direct radiators as respects compression (and the NRC's testing verifies this) but if very high output is the primary requirement there may be better choices than the Salon2. High sensitivity (relatively speaking) ) is their main compromise but I think the tradeoff is well worth it to enjoy what the Revels do best. Listening above an average 90dB SPL is injurious and uncomfortable anyway.

These speakers like power but as Karl reminds us, they are not hard to drive. I spent a few minutes pecking around for the NRC's data but couldn't immediately locate the published tables. They're out there to review if you have the patience to locate them. If you listen at sane levels, none of this is an issue.