Well time passes so fast, its been a month since these landed and I've had plenty of time to experiment with positioning, and even <cough> wiring.
I've reverted to a mid-field listening position as this is essential in my room to adequately support the low end. It also allows positioning in accordance with Magnepan's suggested method - distance between 'speakers approximately 60% of the listening distance. In my room I can get about 10ft listening distance. Tweeter panels on the outside, lightly toed-in ensuring that the tweeter panel is slightly further away than the bass panel. This avoids something often seen in Maggie response plots, the presence dip. Stand flippers down to set the panel almost perpendicular to the floor, though tilting back also works pretty well.
Lateral listening window is quite wide and can certainly ensure that 2 listeners get good sound, though for absolute best performance the window suits a single listener. Then again this describes most 'speakers.
You want to use heavy gauge cabling with these. The load sits at 3.3 Ohms across most of the range and drops to about 2.7 Ohms through the crossover - lower than all other Maggies. They will draw current and they will show small differences between say 12 and 16 AWG cable over longer runs (mine are 6.5m). To put that into context, plain cheap old Linn K20 bests expensive Tellurium Ultra Blue. No miracles, no magic - one simply has a lot more copper and lower resistance.
Performance comes pretty close to Quad 57s overall but with a couple of notable differences.
Imaging is very different. Never the strong point of the 57 IME which tends to paint everything in ultra crisp precision but with little depth (unlike the 63). The LRS stretches the soundstage in all directions to quite amazing degrees on some recordings, though it cannot then place individual sounds within the left-right stage with quite the precision of the 57 and especially not the 63.
Bass is tighter and leaner than either Quad, with less apparent drumskin 'plonk' than either. Goes about as deep as a 57, but 63 goes a little lower. They can play loud but will need lots of power for headbanging loud.
One fascinating aspect of the LRS is an ability to decompress old, flat recordings. It seems to pull them open and juice them up just a tad. Really enjoyed some Elvis recordings of various quality the other evening. These can often sound a bit brash, thin and squashed but the LRS almost seemed to be acting as a dynamic expander.
You don't need a gazillion watts for the LRS.
Again -
you don't need as gazillion watts for the LRS!
Measured as you would a typical box design gives you a painfully low 80dBw sensitivity. In practice and in room this feels more like 85dBw. Dipoles typically sound louder than they measure in terms of sensitivity. For modest rooms you need an amplifier comfortable pushing about 100w into 4 Ohms minimum.
Negatives?
The top end can't match the purity of a Quad ESL but it gets decently close and bests most dome tweeters I've heard.
Getting a reasonably uniform in room response requires a lot of experiment with positioning. Get this wrong and they have no bass and lack upper mid projection.
If you can only tolerate 'speakers with a near perfect on-axis response and textbook directivity performance from the Harman playbook, walk away, these are not for you.
The LRS relies on the ear/brain synthesizing the speaker and room response into a cohesive whole in order to achieve relative neutrality.
And finally, beware well meaning folk who measure these dipoles on a Klippel near field scanner (clue's in the name kids) and then proceed to 'subjectivise' the graphs into prose. No...
These things are astonishing value even at the inflated UK price.
Quick and dirty in-room plot for both LRS playing together at the listening seat.
The usual bass woodles but fairly uniform and note, down to 35Hz in room without EQ or subs.
lRS pair far