Warm romantic & detailed

OP what happens with the tone control. Set flat it does that?

Are you using a silver clad wire? for speaker ICs?, Again are you using silver clad wire, in you IC between source and Pre, and pre amp to amp?.. All of those can add a lot of "BOIL to the mix"  Right over your head, with 8 foot lids... Treat the heck out of it.. Rake the speakers 3-10 degrees. BACK, get the highs further over your head... Make a sticky foam filter for the front of the tweeter, sides, top. ALL low dollar checks, even the IC, use some less expensive copper... look out for silver right now... Gold terminals.

Regards 

Jeffinnh, thanks for posting information about your preferences and your amplification.

Can you tell us a little about your room, and what your placement constraints are?
Imo SoundLab fullrange electrostats... "used" in your price range... meet your "warm, romantic, yet detailed" criteria, and are totally non-fatiguing, assuming they are feasible for your room.

Duke
disclaimer: I’m a SoundLab dealer.

My room is 13 wide x 20 long... I've played around with placement for about 6 months and found the cardas method to be best for over all recommendations. I have atleast 3k + in room treatment: bass traps, combo panels on side walls, rear wall treated, as well diffusers (all GIK.) My current cables are bluejeans, with audioquest red river XLR's across all connections. I've tried towing them out, back, raising them up, etc etc you name it... 

Duke, I think 545's are over his price range which is why I mentioned the Maggies. The OP can certainly add one of your Swarm systems to the Maggies.

I am not either a Sound Labs, Magnepan or Audio Kinesis dealer. I have no relationship to any of these people. Not that I have not tried but they generally run in the opposite direction. Must have bad breath. 

Yes, I wasn’t trying for the BBC curve. I use a 1db drop from 1khz to 20khz but my speakers are very flat through that range which is why I suggested maybe up to 3db or just get some Revel 228be. If we could see a graph would help a lot in figuring out where to adjust. Looks like he's tried room treatments taming that harshness with PEQ is probably the easiest. If you use roon you can try REW and load the filters in roon.