Best speakers out there for Midrange and Highs

I owned cones until I heard Magnepan Tympani 1a's. Then it was Magnepan, then Quad. Now my system is all Quad ESL - want more bass? Add more ESL's.

Trust me - NOTHING beats 32 square feet of crossover-free ESL. Unless it's 48.

I'm now listening to a new pair of Maggie LRS speakers and a new Schiit Vidar amp and this is the best mids and highs I've ever had. I've got the bass routed to a sub with the crossover set to 80hz so the maggies are freed up from the heavy lifting and my understanding is they don't go much lower than 50 hz anyway. The LRS is not a speaker for loud rock music (which is ok for me) but sounds amazing with everything else. They are very intolerant of poorly recorder source material like compressed CD and low-res files like youtube music which sounds pretty crappy on the maggies. The Vidar amp runs warm but as long as I keep the volume somewhat limited it does fine. Still capable of room filling volume. I have ,a couple times, caused the amp to shut down from thermal overload, but only when turning the volume up really loud. But as soon as I back off on the volume a little and turn the Vidar back on it's immediately good to go. This system seems to sound better everyday but I'm not sure whether it's the system or my brain that's breaking in.My previous speakers were Polk Rtia5 floorstanders which were great for loud rock and pop and very forgiving of crummy source material everything sounded good on them although they didn't have the transparency and detail of the new maggies. The music seems to be floating in the air in the room with the LRS speakers, not coming from speakers at all. If regular speakers project sound like a flashlight the LRS is more like an open picture window. I also have a pair of ELAC B6 speakers in a closet upstairs which maybe I'll hook up this weekend they're also great for loud pop and rock. But the maggies look so cool you can kind of see through them and see the ribbon drivers. The highs are superior to any wooden box speaker I've ever heard. And female vocalists sound amazing.

Focal + Naim is one of the worst combination for highs, in my (subjective) opinion - cold and analytical. Very deep and fast with the bass, Naim can really control the speaker, but if you want neutral to warmer sound, I wouldn't go with Naim.

Hi @hombre - Thanks. Sound like you are really enjoying you system.
I like this explanation, paints a very vivid picture:

The LRS is more like an open picture window....

Also when you say:

This system seems to sound better everyday but I’m not sure whether it’s the system or my brain that’s breaking in

Funny but true.. sounds like everyday, you appreciate your sound reproduction more and more...I think that’s what this hobby is all about!

It also reminds me of the ’low fatigue’ factor. If you feel the way you describe when listening, your system must be ’low fatigue’ to you ... and that’s great. Because to me, it does not matter how good the sound is if you can’t listen for long stretch of time.
I can sit in front of my 6000Watts, actively listening, then wondering off, then actively listening again for hours, rarely leaving because I am tired, but mostly because of stuff to do. I think that makes all the difference between looking forward to listening to your system and selling it :)

Hi @wspohn - yes, so to me its not just dialing/ adjusting the volume. It is completely possible on the Salons2 if one needs to and I tried that.  Instead, I read and confirmed that it's when you relieve the main speaker from the super high current bass burden, that the rest of the frequency sound reproductions begin to shine even more. I experienced this immediately when integrating the Salons with the Subs via Active crossover. There were other sonic improvements that I mentioned before.
Salon2s have an amazing midst and highs capability, even better than their smaller sibling models.  And even though the Salon2s are also great for bass reproduction, the JLs are maid for bass, they are hard to compete with [for the money] when it comes to bass. The active JL cross over provides much better integration than the ’uncomplete’ crossovers and frequency attenuators on the subs . So the benefits of adding the JL subs are 1) the Subs are best at what they are built for, helping to pressurize the room with ease, etc. 2) the Salon2s now carry less burden to reproduce the mids with ease and sound much better at what they do. Clarity and dynamics improved also.  Again, very important to me was that imaging was not lost at all (perhaps because I use the same SR Active XLR interconnect cables everywhere).   3) The active crossover literally makes the two Sub/Speaker pair sound like a ’Singularity’.   And yes, the downsides are many 1) More equipment, more floor space (Although I co-share the JLs with my separate HT system- they are great for multi system usage) 2) more interconnects and power cord investments.. more expensive. 3) If you dont get the integration exactly right, the system will surely sound worse.
But it works good.

Finally, thanks all who suggested the different Electrostats - One day I hope to try them.

Happy Holidays to All!

hi jmarshak thanks for the nice response. I’ve been an audiophile for a long time and I’ve figured out that much of what audiophiles claim to hear from amps and CD players is actually a product of their own imagination it’s just that they’re unaware of this phenomenon.If they were blindfolded they wouldn’t be able to distinguish one amp from another. They listen to a four-figure CD player and they imagine that it must sound better than a three-figure CD player because it’s more expensive. I’ve read a lot of this kind of nonsense on the stereophile forums.I've argued with Robert Harley in the pages of TAS about the "sound quality" of digital interconnects. He wrote an absurd review of a four-figure interconnect in which he waxed poetic about the sound quality of it.I told him he was full of it.