Why is an XA30.5 a bad match for Revel Ultima Salon II speakers?

Had the studio 2.  You need more power.  Revel sounds great but with more power.   They sound better. 

Thanks for the link, it was a nifty tool for discovering I needed to tighten up an air conditioning duct cover when my Salon 2s made it buzz at 20.1 Hz!

welcome! good to read it was useful....

Bombaywalla,

How do you think my ARC Ref 150 SE tube amp would fare with the Ultima Salons?

My amp has 4, 8 and 16 ohm output taps.  I surmise that the 4 ohm taps would work best with the Salons given its lowish impedance in the low frequencies.  I seem to recall that the output impedance off the 4 ohm taps is about a half an ohm.  Rated power off the 4 ohm tap is well north of 150 watts if driving a 4 ohm load.

Reason for question:  I've had Salons on my radar screen for a while.

@bifwynne 
Depends how loud you like to listen. Tubes are fantastic from top to bottom until you want max spl. As you hit the upper limit of tubes the highs and mids will increase in loudness but the lows will peter out and stay consistent. That said if your normal listening level is in the upper 80/low 90db the ARC should be fine. 95db peaks should be fine but once you push 100/100+ db the lows peter out IMO.

Bombaywalla,

How do you think my ARC Ref 150 SE tube amp would fare with the Ultima Salons?

My amp has 4, 8 and 16 ohm output taps. I surmise that the 4 ohm taps would work best with the Salons given its lowish impedance in the low frequencies. I seem to recall that the output impedance off the 4 ohm taps is about a half an ohm. Rated power off the 4 ohm tap is well north of 150 watts if driving a 4 ohm load.

Reason for question: I’ve had Salons on my radar screen for a while.

Bifwynne,
good to see you are still lurking around these forums - haven’t heard much from you since you installed DEQX in your system.... :-)

well, we have discussed your ARC 150W/ch amp many times in these forums. I remember that it has a pretty stiff power supply (I seem to remember 1000+ Joules) & being a tube amp it’s going to maintain its output wattage more or less.
What does "Rated power off the 4 ohm tap is well north of 150 watts if driving a 4 ohm load" mean? Is it 200W/ch into 4 Ohms?
I believe it will be much better than the XA30.5 driving the Salons as you will have atleast 2X the output wattage.....
.....but, man, I think you’ll need an even bigger amp to make the Salons sing. I’m thinking atleast 300W/ch (which is going to get expensive!).
You’ll get average sonics from your 150W/ch & like xti16 wrote it depends on how hard you want to drive the Salons. If you settle for less & drive it to lower average SPLs then you should be good but it you want more realistic listening levels, i think you’ll find that you will want a bigger amp.
I once had a speaker that could handle 105dB SPL peaks & it was really very good sonically but on rock & blues there were times I wished it could hit higher peaks.
You might be different - you might be happy with lower peak SPL???

I’ve a friend who has the original Salon speakers & drives it with a Gamut 200W/ch s.s. mono-block amp to a really, really, really good effect. He has a smaller room & they way that speaker pressurizes that room in the bass region is simply a treat. I’ve never heard anything like that in a long time....
Now the s.s. amps of that caliber are different - their output power jumps atleast 50% into lower impedances so I bet that he has something like 300W/ch or slightly more into 4 Ohms (which is where i was going with this in the sentences above).
Hope this helps. FWIW.