New Salon 2's not sounding right: Help!

[chessman]

trponhunter is a pro. You are in good hands, jeffkad.

[Mac Brown]

I have to agree with others that your room and speaker placement is key here
also the Salon 2's need power, with the right amps they will produce awesome bass, they are highly detailed speakers. My Salon's come alive for me after I changed out my speaker wire and IC's to Wire World silver eclipse 6

[jeffkrag]

Thanks everyone. Truthfully, this is wearing me out. Maybe I'm just not up to the task of being a true audiophile and spending tons of hours and dollars tweaking every aspect of my system just to get a pair of speakers to work right. I am somewhat embarassed to say this, but I have to be honest, I may have reached beyond my threshold. I really thought this would be more plug and play, with very good initial sound that could turn great with subsequent tweaking. If this is what the ultra (to me) high-end means, I may have to dumb it down a bit for me. This is just too much work.

What is odd is that some recordings sound sooo good as to be almost awesome. However, so many others sound from OK to downright bad, that my music choices are drastically limited. In addition to the comments I've made previously, there is just no "life", no passion, no emotional involvement to the sound, even with the better recordings. Wow factor on the best recordings, yes. Toe tapping involvement and emotional connection, no.

I may spend some money to get a pro in here to measure,analyze and hopefully figure this out before I bail out altogether. Any Long Islanders around who can help?

[Ritmo]

Jeffkad,

You are right, it should not be this hard, but sometimes it can be. Not only is the quality of the components critical but also the room acoustics and speaker placement are fundamental to excellent sound. I can tell you that once you get those elements right, you will be immensely happy with the Salons.

As I previously mentioned, I first upgraded to my Salon 2s. I thought I had nice electronics at the time - Anthem Pre/Pro and Amp with a Denon CD/DVD player. For cables I had Audioquest mid level speaker cables and Tributaries interconnect cables.

My and my wife's initial reaction to the Salon 2s at home was lukewarm. Soon enough we decided to upgrade the front end, pre and power as well as the cables. The music and the sound are now at a different level.

The Salon 2s are a terrific speaker. Feed them a good signal via good cables and lots of good power - you'll be in "heaven".

Don't give up!

Mike

[trponhunter]

did you move them closer to the side walls? also - you need to post photo's - descriptions in the room simply don't work. post photo's!!!

[TOGA]

Jeffkad, I 've been through this before. I love stereo since I was young, my first high end when I was 21 were Thiel CS1.6, driving them with Proceed amp and Onkyo AVR as a pre made me happy enough. One day I made an upgrade to Thiel CS3.7, oh man. it sounded so metallic and hard. I though good speakers = good music. It's not. I bought Mark Levinson pre/power and new Cambridge 840C Cd player. Still not as I expected.. Then I changed CD to ARC CD7, things has improved, but still too metallic sounding. I upgrade cables. not work. Finally I get rid of Thiel CS3.7 and I got the best speakers I ever heard ( at that time), The Revel Ultima Salon2, soon I feel that while it made satisfying sound, I need more punch and power, then I found Moon W7M and P8. and I lived happily with Salon2 since then. After that the upgrade was just for fun rather than to improve. Even now that I have wonderful Magico Q3 in listening room too, if one not tell me price of each, I really can't tell which one is a more expensive one. Then one might ask why I purchase Magico, it's because I wanted to know what is all about this Q speakers, and it turned out that it 's really a good speakers. So you may need more forgiving speakers or invest more in front ends and cables to see how good Salon2 really are. Of many amplifiers I have tried, I think those that can make good bass out of Salons are Moon Evolution Series, Pass Labs XA160.5, Vitus 50W amps ( yes, 50W).with Mcintosh MC402, Pass X350.5, Audio Research Reference250,Mark Levinson 432 and 436, bass was rather light weight and weak. With salon2, just one wrong AC wall outlet will make it sound unnatural, that's how sensitive they're.

TOga

[jeffkrag]

I should've listened to you guys from the beginning. I needed a better amp to make these puppies sing. Here's what I posted in the Mac forum about the MC452 and it's effect on the Revels:

After roughly a few hours of listening to some rock and Jazz, starting to formulate opinion. Overall, wow, it sounds great!!!

Here's the good and bad (well, not bad, just different). It is so musical and smooth, I can listen forever. Makes my older redbook CDs come alive, and actually makes them listenable again! It completely erased my initial issues with the Salon2's, adding missing bass, midbass, fullness, musicality, etc. Great depth and air. Really hear recording space. Voices are incredible, and can distinguish different singers like never before, but reverse is true for instruments. Seems a little more uniform but congealed, not as easy to pick out individual instruments. Also, missing a little of the metallic shimmer and twang that was more spotlit before. The highs/treble (cymbals, guitar strings, etc) are a little subdued compared to what I'm used too, so we'll see how I feel long term.

Not yet sure if its my end-it-all amp, but have a lot more listening to do.

One thing this amp did was show me how much difference each component makes in the chain. I had a reasonably good mid-fi system: B&W N803s, various B&W surround spkrs, Velodyne Opt-10 sub, Sunfire multi-ch amp, Sunfire TGP5 prepro, Denon 3930 universal player (newly replaced by OPPO BDP95). Got the upgrade itch and, believing speakers were the most important component, jumped on a pair of Revel Salon 2's. Much to my dismay, the Revels had not much bass or midbass in my room, and made lesser/older recordings sound bad. Not fun. The guys here all suggested (in addition to room treatment) a more powerful amp. Couldnt believe 200/400 wpc into 8/4 ohms wasnt enough, especially since several reviews I read online had people gushing over the Revels with lower powered amps (ie, Cary 7.125 multi-ch amp).

What a fool I was to question my fellow AA'ers. Guess it's quality and quantity, but the MC452 ended all speculation about the room (although surely it can be improved acoustically), and ended any issues I may have had with the Revel in the bass and midbass dept, the deconstructing of music I heard previously, and the rendering of lesser recordings unlistenable. EVERYTHING is listenable now!!! What a revelation .

So I have to take my initial "downside" impressions of the MC452 with a grain of salt and wonder if the next leg of the journey (better prepro and/or preamp) will add back some of that missing high end definition and sparkle.

Now it's getting both interesting and rewarding. Whew! What a journey.

Sorry for repeating this post here, but wanted to share this happy ending (figuratively speaking of course, lol) with those of you who tried to help this stubborn fool get it right.

Thanks

[joeinid]

I love happy endings

[Ritmo]

Jeff,

Glad you are feeding them with good power. They will get better (lots better!) as you upgrade the rest of the system.

Lastly, as you can see, AA is a pretty cool place. Everyone is very helpful.

Thanks,
Mike

[LordoftheRingsEE]

---Yup, very nice ending story: Mac Amp with Revel Loudspeakers.