Stereophile: Revel's Ultima2 Salon

After 10 years of selling the $15,000/pair Ultima Salon as its flagship speaker system, Revel introduced a redesign, the $22,000/pair Ultima2 Salon, at CES 2007. When I reviewed the original Salon, I was very pleased by its bass extension and dynamics. What's new in the Mk.2 Salon? It has a more conventional look, and employs all-new drivers that performed better in double-blind tests conducted by the manufacturer. While retaining the basic configuration—a four-way design with one tweeter, one midrange, one mid-woofer and 3 woofers—the Salon 2 no longer has side panels, a rear-firing port, or a rear-firing tweeter. Revel had a pair of the Ultima2 Salons playing in a demo room at the Hilton, driven by a 200Wpc Mark Levinson No.433 amplifier via Transparent speaker cable, a Levinson No.32 Reference preamplifier, and a Levinson No.390S CD processor. The loudspeaker played with all the dynamics and excellent LF response of the original Salon, reproducing the powerful deep bass of the organ accompaniment to John Rutter's Requiem. There was also a richness and smoothness that I found very pleasing.

I included the elegant space-frame grille in the photo because Revel's Kevin Voecks said that it had no degrading effect on the Salon's sound quality, which is just as well, given the rather intimidating appearance of all those metal cones. Both the Salon 2 and the smaller Studio 2 are scheduled to start shipping in April.

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Reader Comments

Posted Tue Jul17, 2007, 1:28 PM — By Richard

Auditioned the Salon2 at Lyric (manhattan) after touring 3 states to listen to Usher BE10, Dali Helicon 800, Pioneer 1EX, 2 places for BW 802D, WattPuppy8, Vandersteen Quatro and 5A, Lapinski 707 and Martin Logan Summit. Most, but not all, rooms and speaker positioning in the room that these units are demonstrated in are just not wonderful sounding at least to my ears. The Salon2 did have the smoothest and most delineation of orchestral instrument groups of the setups I have heard in the environment I heard them in.

Posted Sat Dec22, 2007, 8:30 PM — By Richard

Sorry for not reviewing this page for so long. Smooth to me means that I heard , the strings of the violins in an orchestra setting (the first time on this CD)without the sense that my ears were being pierced by a 12 inch hat pin.

Posted Sun Dec23, 2007, 8:05 PM — By jeff

So who did you decide [or would] to live with?

Posted Sat Dec29, 2007, 1:46 PM — By Richard

And therein festers the problem, until death do us part. Was impressed with several sounds at the RMAF but did not have my music with me in order to form an informed opinion. Will continue to wait for more reviews while trying to find a good painting contractor.

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