Warm romantic & detailed


Good morning Gentlemen & ladies... 

I'm just starting to toy with idea of replacing my Focal 1038's... No matter how I treat my room, or what equipment I throw at it I just can't seem to tame the harsh highs on this speaker. 

I'd like to stay in the same price range of the Electra's (7/8k), I don't mind buying used, the musts for me at this point are: Warm, romantic, yet detailed... It would be beautiful to just sit and listen and not have ear fatigue after 15 minutes of listening. 

Can you please recommend something? 
jeffinnh76
Regarding amplification, not sure Parasound would be any warmer than your current Mc combo.  It might be a hair more forward.  Moot though.  Mentally, it sounds like you are ready to dump the Focals. 

What you will find is that Spendor and Harbeth actually deliver a ton of detail, it just isn't accomplished via a more forward tweeter like what is used in the Electra's  If you paired the Focals with very warm amplification (Naim/Conrad Johnson) you will find that they will sound natural.  Spendors paired with your amplification will sound natural.  The net result will be a similar, very detailed sound profile.  

I did a demo of the Spendor D7.2s with Naim gear and it was dark.  AVM tube gear was more forward than the Naim gear I listened on.  

An alternate is to do exactly what mijostyn is suggesting and that is run a digital EQ and turn down the high frequency response.  Or theoretically you could get an old-school graphic equalizer.  

Do you use Roon?  Roon has a digital EQ incorporated into it and could solve your issue.  
I'm extremely familiar with measurements, but don't feel that I should have to / want to trade out tride and true equipment for the sake of a bright speaker. I use REW for my theater system, and am very versed with it. Honestly I want a simple system that does not require so much toil & boil outside of the normal placement, cables etc etc... Magnapans would not work for my application 
Jeffinnh76, thanks for the additional information about your room. How much freedom do you have with speaker positioning?

My own sonic priorities are not very different from yours. Imo characteristics which contribute to "warm, romantic and detailed" without "ear fatigue after 15 minutes of listening" include:

- A frequency response curve which slopes gently downwards with rising frequency. This contributes to "warmth".

- The off-axis response tracks the direct sound very closely, as when there is a discrepancy between the two, the result can be listening fatigue.

- The ear’s sensitivity is highest around roughly 4 kHz. The region from roughly 2-5 kHz should be free from peaks, including peaks in the off-axis response. The latter is actually fairly common.

- "Romantic" implies a well-energized reverberant field, as spectrally-correct reflections convey timbral richness (which is one of the selling points of Maggies and SoundLabs). Too much absorption in the room can work against this, so one argument for speakers with smooth off-axis response is that they do not need aggressive absorption to "fix" their off-axis response.

- "Detailed" does not necessarily require an elevated or even a "flat" top-end response, but if the top end is gently downward-sloping (for the sake of warmth) then the tweeter should have high resolution to preserve inner detail.

- Imo some user adjustability of the speaker’s tonal balance can be beneficial, for adaptation to different room acoustic situations.

Duke
Because I rank it close up there with the Harbeths and Spendors recommended by others, I'm going to mention the Vienna Acoustics Liszt again.  You can get exceptional bargains on used examples if you keep your eyes open.  
Rather than swap out equipment or run separate software do you guys think adding the mcintosh men220 to my system would help?