Revel Salon 2 vrs Kef 207/2

Stereophile reveiwed both . Kef feb 08 ... Salon june 08 ... They were both very well liked , and tied for speaker of the year . Iv'e heard both and refer the Salons . Although I'm biased as I own the Salon 1s, and would not part with them for anything .

egrady, I agree with you on your points. That's why I have even higher regards for the KEF 207.2. They sounded right in dealer demo, and they sound equally right at home. They are not too picky on placement (due to Uni-q) I guess, The sweet spot area is big (you don't need to sit straight at the center of listening position nervously) the system matching wise, you don't need monster power to drive them (fit with right cabling) you can easily configure the sound to your liking. Given it's sheer size and given it is really a full-floor standing speakers, I was bit worried about the bass control..but the KEFs deliver powerful but clean, tight bass that cross over to the high well balanced that you don't need to worry about the bass bloat. It was almost like a "plug and play"...They will sound good right out of box. I said in my previous post that for long term satisfaction at home, KEF 207/2 will be a safer bet. These are some of the reasons why. I just know that world-class speakers Salon 2 are, when brought home, I will have much more headaches to deal with to get them right. Wrong placement/room size, wrong system match, wrong cable match upstream, you got yourselves speakers that could potentially fatigue you right out. then you got yourselves over $20k headache. These are the observations from my 20 years of painstaking experiences. However, once again, these comments are personal.. My ears prefer clean, well balanced sound but with much emphasis on the mid, how musical they sound while still being detailed, transparent, and dynamic. Anyway, shopping for a new speaker is always an enjoyable experience so do yourselves good and try as many speakers before deciding..It amazing the # of choices you have out there nowadays...Personally I would always lean toward manufacturers that design and manufacture their own drivers, over those who outsource to Scanspeak or Audio Tech. or other less known driver manufacturers.

How do you know the Revels will have more placement issues than the KEFs? Uni-q would have little to do with it, incidentally.

The conclusion that the KEF is generally more system/room compatible than the Revel is hard for me to follow. Other than the fact that the Revel does need more power. In fact, they both are more flexible than most large floor standing speakers because they have tone controls and large sweet spots.

It may be easy to get 90% of what the KEF can do following a basic room placement rule-of-thumb, but to get 100% out of any speaker almost always takes many trial and error efforts.

I'm wondering, Egrady, if he formed that conclusion after my original post regarding my week of inching around the Revels to get the right placement. The Revels were, truth be known, more difficult to place that my previous Legacy Focus, but I suspect that the Focus was inherently easier to place because it had front and rear woofers, and back-facing rather than down-facing ports. But I'd chalk that up more to the Legacys being easy to place than the Revels being more difficult than normal.

As I mentioned previously, the KEFs and the Revels are both very, very good. There are differences between them, but they are so close to the same level of achievement that it will end up being mere personal preference for which you choose. The KEF's mid-bass, at least in my audition, definitely struck me as plumper than the Revel's, and some people might be drawn to that. On the other hand, the Revel's reproduction of cymbals still strikes me as unmatched by any speaker I've ever heard. So, because there are subtle differences, it is easy to see how an individual could develop a preference for one over the other, even though either one exceeds the performance, overall, of just about any other speaker I've ever heard.