"The Ultra High-End Speaker."

...Ultra High-End Speaker...

I don't put labels on performance and or price levels.  Rather, I demo to find the sound I like, then try to reproduce it within my budget.  

I also owned the salon 2 and several other speakers in their price group. The persona 7f and usher be20dmd at the same time and being able to rotate speakers at will and listen as long as  wanted I was able to hear specifically to what they did different from each other. I didn't have the same luxury with components and used a Hegel H360 with all 3 speakers. The salon 2 with an 82 db sensitivity was significantly harder to drive so possibly why they sounded so lifeless compared with the other two, Yes matching with a db meter the salon 2 was still dynamically restricted  compared to the others, but a more powerful amp might have helped. The Persona 7f are excellent, but have to be 3-5' away from any reflective surfaces, they can change their stripes like no speaker i've ever heard. They can soundstage like a pair of mini monitors or large floorstanders just by changing placement. The 2x8" woofers are actually 8.25 inside the basket and can really push some air. Ushers had my favorite presentation regarding soundstage, imaging and tonal balance, but bass was too fat for my room and the speakers were to physically large to get away from boundary reinforcement. 

I found that all 3 speakers while different still had comparable quality with similar resolution ability and after owning all 3 at the same time I can't say 1 is better than the other. All 3 meet the bar of diminishing returns with excellent resolution and the deciding points after taste are room acoustics and components.

I landed on a different speaker entirely, but still couldn't help but add my .02.

Steve59:  You are correct.  Based on my own personal experience, the Hegel H390 are definitely underpowering the Revel Salon 2 speakers.  I tried it and experienced the same underwhelming results that you did.  The H390 doesn't have enough juice to wake up the Salon 2 speakers drivers.  But, when I switched to the Hegel H590, "HUGE DIFFERENCE."  Because my listening room is not very large, the extremely powerful and very high current H590 works especially well driving the Salon 2s.  If I were in a large room, I'd go with separates as to increase the power in order to drive the Salon 2s to their fullest.  But, still, in my smaller room, the H590 works great!!!  

Once you hear Tocaro everything else is a sound system and not a music system. 
 

no cross over will ever add to the music. No pumping membrane will ever follow the actual notes. No marketing hype will ever make it more realistic. 
 

When it comes to the ultra high-end, some of the very best sound I've ever heard was a set of the Dutch & Dutch 8c, carefully set up and EQ'd.  I have NEVER heard better imaging and the tonal balance couldn't have been better.  They retail at about $15k/pair, which is pretty cheap for "ultra high-end", but they stand up against anything I've ever heard, at any price.

$15k is still a chunk of change, but for that $15k you get a full audio system.  Just add a streamer or PC and you're done.  This is a powered loudspeaker with active crossover, DSP EQ and DAC built-in.   No need to spend anything on an amplifier, preamp, interconnects or speaker cables.  It sits on your Local Area Network as a Roon target and you just connect to it.  And then you're done.  

Pretty good value it seems to me.