HELP B&W 802D or Revel Ultima Salon2

Before you spend a zillion dollars replacing the Salon 2s you might consider analyzing your system. I highly recommend a Dayton Audio OmniMic set-up from Parts Express. It'll run on any PC. You might find that you have a big suck-out in the 500Hz-2KHz range, which might explain your problem with vocals. It could just be that you need to adjust your speaker placement for room modes. Even if you end up getting a different speaker the OmniMic is a great tool for system set-up, so IMO you can't go wrong. Yeah, it's about $300, but compared to $15K speakers it's a nit.

A couple other questions:

Do you listen to the Salon2s with the grilles on or off? Have you tried both?

Have you tried adjusting the controls in the cable connection box?

Jeffkad, there's plenty of life, musicality and slam in my system and I'm not experiencing the issues you discuss. What's your other gear upstream from the Salon 2s?

These kind of suggestions have been made to Jeffkad at another forum. I think he is looking for something that's plug and play.

Irv, thanls for the recommendation. I think thats a good investment and I will try it. I have listened with grills on and off. The adjustments simply increase/decrease tweeter and decrease bass for close to wall placement. My issue is low bass and midrange among other issues I mentioned in my previous post.

Sfstereo, with all due respect, I was simply offering my perspective here, and all suggestions and comments are welcome, even if similar suggestions were made elsewhere. Having said that, you are not wrong, I would prefer something more plug and play and not have to mess around so much with placement, room, etc. However, there may be no such animal if I want to play on this level. I appreciate Irv's suggestion, as the Dayton OmniMic is something I can buy to see if indeed these is a suckout issue, and then decide if/how I want to deal with it. For what it's worth, I have moved them around and improved the bass response significantly, but still have recessed vocals on some CDs (just listened again to Clapton Unplugged Layla cut and his voice was quite recessed), as well as the "deconstruct" issue I raised above.

Jeff, the Salon 2 is very sensitive to room placement for a lot of parameters, especially bass response. Much more so than my previous Legacy Focus speakers were, by a long shot. I've mentioned in other threads that when my Salon 2s are set up for best imaging and response in the 200Hz and up range my bass response is terrible. I finally gave up and got a subwoofer I could move around to my heart's content, and leave the Salon 2s in positions optimized for everything else. I use a 80Hz-6db/octave high filter for the Salon 2 woofers, which of course requires four amplifier channels. (The mids/high run direct from the pre-amp.) In my room there was really no other choice.

I have a lot of fun with the OmniMic real-time analyzer screen too. It shows you where the energy in a recording really is. I like 1/12th octave smoothing mode.

You might be surprised at the effect the tweeter control has on voices. Try turning it down to -.5 with the grilles off and see what happens.

Of course, it just might be that you will like the 802D better. I know someone that definitely prefers them to my Salon 2s. It's not a crime. :)