Warm romantic & detailed

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? 

The Mac uses room perfect lyngdorf's room correction. It should work fine but you could get a Minidsp DDRC-22D  for $700 and use Dirac. 

Adding the Mc MEN220 is running separate software in that it is the Lyngdorf room correction and is a pricey solution at $4500.   It is also not certain to solve your problem.  I find Lyngdorf amps sound a little bright even with room correction engaged but I am not an expert on the implementation and engagement of that software.  

It might be cheaper for you just to get new speakers.  You should be able to get $2800 to $3000 on trade for your speakers if you have original packaging.  More if you sell them yourself.  Out-of pocket would then depend on the exact model you look at.  

For example, the Spendor D7.2s list for $6800.  That would means $3800 to $4000 out of pocker for a new Spendor vs. $4500 for the MEN220.  

If you were my customer that is roughly the deal I would offer for the Spendors.  

Another interesting speaker in the same price range would be the Scansonic MB5 B.  List is $7200.  Scansonic delivers a huge soundstage and is very natural sounding.  You are supposed to set them up off axis as the speaker is designed to use reflections in the room to deliver a deep and immersive soundstage.  

Trade allowance would probably go up a touch vs. Scansonic compared to Spendor but you get the idea. Whoever your dealer is, should be able to work with you to get to a smart solution that will resolve your issue and keep your budget down.