I traded up my Paradigms studio 100s this past summer for these B&W 703. I find the highs on the 703 to be a bit harsh / bright. How do I tame them? I currently have them toed in slightly towards the listener.
No to the silver wire. Probably make the problem worse. I think Arafel has a great idea. Get a home audition of a different speaker like JM Lab, Quad, Vandersteen, or some such and see if that fixes the problem.
Some very nice equipment. Try room treatments and/or cables? IMHO, if that doesn't work you might look at different speakers. I find that pretty much all B&W speakers, except the Diamond series are bright. Not saying that to start a fight with B&W fans because I think B&W's do alot of things very good to excellent. Their strongest attribute in my opinion is the quality of their enclosures but, the weakest link is the metal dome tweeter. I too use to own Paradigm's (Studio 40's). They were my first taste of higher quality audio. After about 1.5 years with them I found my self listening less and less. So the hunt was on and after many trips to several audio shops I found that it was the brightness that was reducing the time listening. I now have Quad 12L's with Quad SS components. Good luck.
abb@cs.com listed his/her equipment as Cary/AES Six Pacs, Cary/AES DJH sig preamp and a Jolida cd player. Last time I checked all those components were tube based.
Take what Nrenter says with a grain (or maybe a tablespoon full) of salt. Anyone that spends the amount of time on building their own cables as Nick does, is not right in the head. All kidding aside. I have been to Nick's house and listened to his system, it's very nice. You might shoot him an email about tube rolling, speaker placement, cables and so on to tame the brightness.
I would definitely get a in home audition on the 800's before you put down the extra cash on them. You may have the same problem. If you can swing some more cash you might look at the Diamond series by B&W if you are set on staying with B&W's. Try room treatments for now.
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