I read your thread with interest, as I have been curious myself of late about the Salons and just auditioned a pair this past weekend at Lyric HiFi in Manhattan. Prior to doing so, I reread the reviews of the Salon, as well as reviews of its smaller sibling, the Studio. The reason I am responding to your thread is to tell you that, for whatever it's worth, Kalman Rubenstein, a reviewer for Stereophile, bought a pair of Revel Studios as his reference speaker, and in his review of the Studio, remarked upon what great synergy they have with his reference amps, the Sonic Frontiers Power 3 monoblocks. Although all of the hi-fi magazines are capable, in my opinion, of publishing bad reviews / biased reviews, etc., my guess is that when a reviewer chooses speakers for his personal reference system and comments that they work especially well with his reference amps, there is some truth to that comment. As for the Power 3's, I don't know if you know anything about them, but my closest "hi-fi friend" has been running Power 3's for nearly three years and i have heard them at great length. I won't comment upon the sound he gets other than to say that he obviously likes what they can do, as do I, but I do want to mention that they have proven to be incredibly reliable for him -- he runs them nearly every day (and runs them hard at times) with huge Dunlavy SC-V's, and in three years, he has never had to replace any tubes. I believe that the Power 3 may now be out of production, but they are frequently available on Audiogon for +/- $4,000.
If you ARE inclined to consider Power 3's, I would not be dissuaded by the fact that their power rating is only 220 watts/channel -- each monoblock uses eight 6550c power tubes in a conservative circuit with a first-rate power supply -- practically speaking, there's not going to be much of a horsepower difference between them and anything else (you may get an extra 6 decibels or so and somewhat tighter bass if you use a mega amp, but the Salons are fairly efficient and I would bet you won't have occasion to hear the difference unless you are listening to extremely demanding material at really high volume -- 220 watts are a lot of watts if they're coming from well-designed tube monoblocks).
I could go on and on, but I suppose my main point is that, if a reviewer says the Power 3's work great with the Studios and he uses that combo as his reference, they probably do sound great together and you may want to give that amp some thought if you are looking for something for your Salons. You could probably e-mail Kalman Rubenstein for his thoughts. I could also pass along the e-mail address of my friend with the Power 3's should you want to pick his brain. And, oh yes, speaker cables ... my friend uses close-to-top-of-the-line Transparent Audio. I can't recall what Karmen Rubenstein uses -- I didn't reread the review prior to writing this. Anthony Cordesman, senior reviewer for TAS, said that the then-best Transparent Audio speaker cables were his first choice for the Salon. You would have to try them all together to make certain, but it's something to go on.
Good luck
P.S. - If you are wondering what my biases might be, my main system:
VPI Aries w/ JMW 10.5 arm and van den Hul Frog Cartridge
Levinson 360s processor and 37 Transport
Hovland line stage
Rowland Cadence phono preamp
VAC Renaissance Mark III 140 monoblocks
Vienna Acoustics Mahler speakers
All Kimber Select silver interconnects and speaker cable (except phono cable)
Source components fed by PS Audio 300
All components run through PS Audio Ultimate Outlets
Second system:
Rega Planar 3 w/ RB-300 arm and Grado Sonata cartridge
CAL Audio Sigma II processor and Delta transport
Bryston moving magnet phono stage
Audio Research LS-3 preamp
Rowland Model 6 monoblocks with battery power supplies
Dynaudio Contour 3.3 speakers
All Kimber Select silver interconnects (w/ Kimber Select all-copper speaker cables)
If you ARE inclined to consider Power 3's, I would not be dissuaded by the fact that their power rating is only 220 watts/channel -- each monoblock uses eight 6550c power tubes in a conservative circuit with a first-rate power supply -- practically speaking, there's not going to be much of a horsepower difference between them and anything else (you may get an extra 6 decibels or so and somewhat tighter bass if you use a mega amp, but the Salons are fairly efficient and I would bet you won't have occasion to hear the difference unless you are listening to extremely demanding material at really high volume -- 220 watts are a lot of watts if they're coming from well-designed tube monoblocks).
I could go on and on, but I suppose my main point is that, if a reviewer says the Power 3's work great with the Studios and he uses that combo as his reference, they probably do sound great together and you may want to give that amp some thought if you are looking for something for your Salons. You could probably e-mail Kalman Rubenstein for his thoughts. I could also pass along the e-mail address of my friend with the Power 3's should you want to pick his brain. And, oh yes, speaker cables ... my friend uses close-to-top-of-the-line Transparent Audio. I can't recall what Karmen Rubenstein uses -- I didn't reread the review prior to writing this. Anthony Cordesman, senior reviewer for TAS, said that the then-best Transparent Audio speaker cables were his first choice for the Salon. You would have to try them all together to make certain, but it's something to go on.
Good luck
P.S. - If you are wondering what my biases might be, my main system:
VPI Aries w/ JMW 10.5 arm and van den Hul Frog Cartridge
Levinson 360s processor and 37 Transport
Hovland line stage
Rowland Cadence phono preamp
VAC Renaissance Mark III 140 monoblocks
Vienna Acoustics Mahler speakers
All Kimber Select silver interconnects and speaker cable (except phono cable)
Source components fed by PS Audio 300
All components run through PS Audio Ultimate Outlets
Second system:
Rega Planar 3 w/ RB-300 arm and Grado Sonata cartridge
CAL Audio Sigma II processor and Delta transport
Bryston moving magnet phono stage
Audio Research LS-3 preamp
Rowland Model 6 monoblocks with battery power supplies
Dynaudio Contour 3.3 speakers
All Kimber Select silver interconnects (w/ Kimber Select all-copper speaker cables)