The Best Midrange in the World Right Now

I agree, get the midrange wrong and the rest cannot hold it all together. That's why it took me 2 years to find a speaker to replace my Harbeth Compact 7's--they don't do everything but they absolutely get the midrange right. Other than the Harbeth line with their Radial driver I can only think of one speaker I've heard that measures up in the midrange department--the Quad electrostatics.

My journey for new speakers led me to the Daedalus DA-1's. While they do not have the midrange purity of the Harbeth's or Quad's, they get very close. Like those speakers they are utterly unfatiguing--you can listen for hours without tiring--this because of low distortion combined with pleasing tonal balance. And, unlike the Quads and the Harbeth's, the DA-1's ROCK. They have all the dynamics you could ever want. They are easy to place and easy to drive. And, to your point, the midrange is darn nice if not quite up to the level of the best in the field.

Dpac996. I had a 100.2 and couldn't agree more. Great amp. I just ran too hot for my in-cabinet installation. The 150.2 gets pretty close but runs cool as a cucumber.

I think it is important to distinguish between midrange accuracy (i.e. tonal authenticity--do instruments and voices sound the way they do in real life) and transparency (i.e. articulation and detail--how much information is reproduced within the middle ranges). In my experience, it is very difficult to find a speaker that does BOTH of these things very well. The British/BBC approach scores high marks for authenticity but sacrifices transparency. Many, many other speakers provide transparency but fail to deliver authenticity. The Harbeth's, with the Radial driver, move the British sound closer to the ideal in that they are fairly transparent. The Quads are the only speaker, in my experience, to do both. In trying to find an attractive pair of speakers that are successful in BOTH areas, easy to place and could be had for under 8K I was ultimately unsuccessful. The speakers I ended up with get me very, very close to the ideal but sacrifice a little transparency for accuracy. To me this makes the most sense since a lifelike portrayal of instrumental tone and timbre is critical to fooling your brain into believing what is heard is real music. The last measure of detail, while also important for this purpose, can be lived without. Others will reverse these priorities I'm sure.