Biwire / Speaker / Amp Combo Question

The brightness is probably just musical soup in the high-frequencies. Once these are in focus, the perceived brightness will go away. I would try different CD players first and then replace your IC's with better ones (low-capacitance). I recommend the Sony DVP-S7700 or the DVP-S9000ES. The ES in particular has incredibly good DAC's foro CD's and plays DVD's extremely well too.

I just bought a CinePro Power Pro 20, a switched from my Monster 5000 which I liked, but I find the PowerPro cleaned the highs well, but reveal limitations in my speakers. I am using the v.1 studio 100s, and have heard others say the 60s are very sweet sounding...and v.2's made great improvements in the crossover, and remade the tweeter (or was it midrange) and tweeked the cabinet. I am currently paying off a new set of speakers (Tyler Acoustic 7U). I have always liked Paradigm, and they are sweet speakers, but there are better for music, and I am really getting into 2 channel. I am saying no to dvda and sacd for now. I do think my rig sounds great, but can be improved.

Have you investigated any kind of power conditioners? I have the Studio 60's and Transparent cables. At first I found the combination to be very bright, then I hooked up a PS Audio P300. Worked like a charm. It turns out that I didn't have very clean power going to my front end. Also, as mentioned above you can experiment with other cables that are known to be warmer. FMS waveguide biwire is a fantastic cable and was much better than anything else I tried at the same price-point. I went through a series of judgements about the cable, until I compared to others. FMS, Cardas, and Transparent are my favorites of the cables that I have tried. Good luck!

You can bi-wire...the 1505 is a 5 channel amp right? Just run 2 of those channels to each speaker...you will need to buy another set of speaker wire (and interconnects), and in doing that, you may want to experiment with different flavors to find one that tones down the brightness. I own the 100s as well, and had found them to be incredible speakers for HT, and dam good for 2-channel, but the metal dome tweeter is bright, its just the nature of the beast. I am using Transparent ML+ ICs, and Analysis Plus Oval 9 speaker wire. I have dont too much experimenting with ICs, but would recommend Cardas, or Acoustic Zen in addition to Transparent to test with. I have heard silver wire in ICs can contribute to brightness, so listen before you buy.