Listening Room or Components or my ears?

@bzawa 

Has this system always sounded this way or is this a recent development? 

Have you recently changed it in some way -- for example, are the speakers new?

Did you recently relocate the system from a different space?

Nothing new except the cables, but I had this complaint before. 

Photos would be helpful... there is a place to put photos under your ID by creating a virtual system. 

Focal can are a bit trebly. The Denon could be a contributor... the integrated amp should not. Cable and interconnects can help. I recommend Cardas, they are a touch warm... Clear Beyond would be my first thought. 

Try positioning speaker straight out... no toe in.  Get a bunch of couch pillows and bedding and put behind speaker and along floor and at reflection point on the side of the speaker that is close to the wall. This can take twenty minutes... densely pad stuff. Big difference? Then you are on your way. 

I would suggest pursuing room treatments, because even if it's some combination of equipment that isn't to your liking, the treated room will benefit you greatly no matter what direction you go with speakers or gear. 

Have you tried tube rolling in your Rogue? You can make solid gains in that direction. You may also have tubes that are going...  Check bias and maybe start with new tube for the pre section.

Focal Aria have a lot of treble presence, even though the speakers are warm overall. I would also try playing with the angle as suggested above. 

Your description makes the room sound like a problem.  I can surmise you have one wall that is +/- 21 feet long, but not much else.   A lot of reflections off walls with paneling.  Have a look at this site and see if you can select an area of the total room that could give you better H x L x W.  Then consider some low cost acoustic  wall treatment.  They say the room is 50% of the sound.  I would start there.  Cheers.   https://www.acoustic.ua/forms/rr.en.html  

Agree with the advice on treating your room including adjusting the speakers toe-in and your listening position.  Focals can sound a bit harsh or sibilant especially if you’re sensitive to sibilance.  You may want to demo speakers with a different sound profile if the room treatments don’t work.  You may prefer speakers with a rolled off top end instead of an elevated in room response. 

Six feet is very close together.  Can you move them apart and toe them out more - get out of the tweeter's death ray?

See an audiologist first, if you want to avoid or postpone a wild goose chase.

My suspicion is that the Focal speakers are the biggest culprits for your treble character. 

There are so many ways to remedy this but I will attempt to give you the easiest vs the most comprehensive solution.

As others have recommended, getting panels on your first reflection points may help with this issue.  I would recommend gik acoustics or doing a DIY panel build.  Not hard.  Just need some stiff insulation and fabric and frame.

Another thing you can do is get a Umik-1 and use room eq wizard and see what your frequency response looks like both on var smoothing and at 1/6 smoothing.  You may be able to determine where that resonant frequency is and use a notch EQ filter to reduce that band.

And if you really want to go spend some money, yes maybe it's the focals.  I recommend tektons for detail without glare or harshness.  Double impacts are my go to recommendation under 5k

I was a long time in this hobby before I realised the importance of the listening room and then more by accident than design.

A visiting distributor commented on how good my listening room's acoustics were,It is my 21x12 ft lounge with a concrete floor, coved ceiling and large leather three piece suite.

The speakers, now Hailey Reference 2,2s are on one of the long walls about halfway and firing across the room, but at the time of his visit were Kipod Signature passives.

So I endorse other members comments on reviewing the listening room set  up.I am not that familiar with Focal speakers but in my limited experience they can be a bit treble dominant

Start with the room first though before changing the Focals

Couple of thoughts from a fellow Focal owner:

Are the cables fully run-in?

Your speakers are very close together and this may be strangling the midrange thus highlighting the HF which you aren't loving.

My mains are a little more than 8' apart.  Experiment with toe-in and rake which will change how the HF arrives at your position.  Typically, Focal's need very little toe-in.

Perhaps find a way to temporarily hang a blanket on the front wall behind your mains and see if this improves things.  Good luck and cheers.

I used this method that came from Focal with good results.  Might be worth a try.

From Focal:

Optimisation For perfectionists, here is a formula for optimal positioning: If A is the distance from the centre of the woofer to the nearest floor or wall, B is the distance to the next closest floor or wall, and C is the greatest distance (A < B < C), the equation B2 = AC defines the ideal loudspeaker position. • Example: If the centre of the woofer is 20" (50cm) away from the rear wall (A) and 24" (60cm) above the floor (B), then the side wall will be ideally 28" (72cm) away [C = B2 ⁄ A = 28" (72cm)] (fig. D)

Focal goes on to say:

If the sound is harsh, aggressive: the acoustics of your listening room are probably too reverberant. Consider using sound absorbing materials (carpets, upholstered furniture, tapestries, curtains, etc.) and sound-reflecting materials (furniture) to absorb or diffuse resonance

IMO, if you are having this problem with a Rogue magnum 3, which is very warm sounding (I had 1 for years), it’s both your speakers and the denon. You have no dac and the denon isn’t any good. The focals are also on the cool side of things. 
start with a new source, get a good dac, the best you can afford and stream ripped or Qobuz/Tidal to see if your sound gets better. I use Roon on an external server where thousands of cds are ripped to a local ssd, and then I subscribe to Qobuz, but using Roon you just play music at it determines if it’s coming from your internal disk or from Qobuz.

If that doesn’t help in the sound quality, either get new speakers that are more neutral or get a couple of subs for the focals

Do you have anything soft in the room? 

Suggest getting some floor rugs, and curtains for any windows. 

My room has 2 big floor to ceiling windows, the reflections where harsh. Picked up some heavy home theater curtains, they transformed the space, were approved by the boss.

I would invest in a DAC first, I suspect the Denon has a lot of digital noise and that the built in DAC is not the greatest quality.

If you like wall art consider acoustic art panels.  These are sound absorbing panels with your choice of art printed on them.

Generally speaking though, if you are in a basement with reflective surfaces it’s almost not worth any speaker upgrades until you contain that... OR you go with speakers with heavily controlled dispersion patterns like horns or electro-statics.

If you are interested to learn how much this can improve things, try putting up blankets or tapestries on the walls.  Something thicker than sheets.

Also, if you are in a basement don't forget your ceiling tiles.  Replacing traditional tiles with drop in acoustic panels should be part of your mix if you have a drop ceiling.

I have never liked the sound of Focal speakers, just to "French" which is very similar to man if not most Asian preferences as well. I would still do a good job of room treatments first and you might find they suite your taste just fine, if not then tuning if you can electronically, cables or tweak the crossovers to reduce the output of the tweeters or use a filter to tame the band width that is the issue. This could even be done on the exterior of the speakers or the output of the amp depending on how they are wired.

Rick

As others have mentioned your problem is the speakers.

Totally agree that the first order of business is room acoustics. Everything else mentioned only treats the input into the room, not the output of the room to your ears. The critical distance, the point at which the reflected sound level equals the direct sound level in most untreated listening rooms isn’t more than 2 or 3 feet. That means at usual listening distances most of what you hear is uncontrolled reflections, made more noticeable by your speakers inherent brightness. This is why 'room.equalization' will not help until you've treated the room first. You’ll probably need a minimum of 60 ft2 (4 - 2X4 2" and 8 - 2X2 2" panels) for the sidewalls and ceiling, plus a couple bass traps for starters. Two large panels should go vertically on the sidewalls at the point of first reflection. The smaller panels can be used on the ceiling, in a grid pattern. The last two panels should go farther back on the sidewalls of a long narrow room or rear walls of a shallow wide room. Most panel mfrs offer a number of color and fabric options, or even art prints, so complimenting the room shouldn’t be hard. White panels on a white ceiling are nearly invisible. I like Acoustimac for their quality, selection, customer service and price. Virtually all panels, regardless of manufacturer, use Corning 703 Fiberglass or EcoCore Rockwool inside and commercial grade fabrics for the wrap, so be wary of any extraordinary claims, their performance is nearly all identical.

Once youve addressed the big issue, then you can turn your attention to the other tweaks, because now you’ll be able to hear them.

, 

@OP - two definite problems and one potential one. Your Focals are bright sounding and the Rogue amp leans in the same direction - put together its a case of negative synergy. But the speakers are the more problematic of the pair. The room sounds like it would benefit from acoustic treatment. Since that is cheaper than changing speakers, it should be your first port of call. But don't be surprised if you have to look at the equipment once the room is sorted. But at least you will have a neutral sounding space to work with.

My older Wilson speakers have the Focal 1" inverted titanium-coated tweeters.   They have a bad reputation for harsh highs.   When I first got them, I concurred.   Not anymore.  Now, they sound sublime.   Zero fatigue.   The solution was cleaning up the AC power - with special attention to the digital components.   

All of the above suggestions about the room, room treatments, speaker placement, speaker toe-in are correct - as is clean power.   It takes a fair amount of tweaking to properly dial-in good SQ.    The distance between the speakers is based on several factors.  If they’re too far apart, the soundstage becomes defocused & delayered - a vocalist sounds like their mouth is 5 ft wide.

Here are assorted discussions.

Reduce all toe-in. Have speakers facing straight ahead. Worked like a charm for my B&W 803 D3s.

Facing speakers almost straight ahead does turn down higher frequencies and especially if the speakers are not far apart from each other. No toe in toward the main listener position.

Good Day

Thanks to all for helpful comments and suggestions. Much appreciated.

You've given me lots to think about and explore.

In my experience I have never been in an untreated room that did not emphasize the upper mid’s and hi’s. You also have a room gain imbalance with the right speaker being 15’ from the side wall, which will help de-emphasize the lower frequencies on that side. Also our ears are less sensitive to lower frequencies at lower volume levels. In my opinion you have three things working against you, but I think room treatments is by far the best place to start.

Hello All

I separated the speakers by about a foot and positioned them without the toe-in. It does sound a lot better. A lot! Music is bigger, deeper, involving. Thanks for the advice. Wish I'd done this years ago. Next step - room treatments.

Wood paneling, framed posters, cement floors.....a lots of reflective surfaces. Focal's are tipped up in the treble to begin with, and the toe in is not helping if they are that close together. Get a wool area rug at least 5/8" thick or better, and lay that down.....modern carpet is reflective, not absorbing. Wayfair has them for reasonable cost......just make sure they do not have a coated backing.

Look into absorbing panels directly behind the speakers, diffusers behind the listening area, and diffusers at the first reflection point.....that might be a good starting point, and not as expensive as you might expect (GIK Acoustics or the like). As someone previously mentioned, you could have your absorbing panels covered in copies of your posters.

You've already found out that separating the speakers and to toe out, so that's good. Great luck to you

Proper speaker placement, acoustic treatments. If those don't work, no component will fix it. Get new speakers.

About room treatments.. most places will come up with a plan for you after you send them photos and measurements and the web is full of info. Your first reflection point is the biggie. I used Music City Acoustics and it worked out well. Many system pages here will list where they got their treatment panels from. You can also use DSP aka Digital Signal Processing. Some swear by it and others swear at it. 

Room treatments- Don’t overdo it 

Maybe none of the three choices.

Maybe you are just revealing the noise and poor recordings on the CDs you’ve been listening too?   

Time for different speakers...try a wharfedale linton

My system is sounding a bit harsh, hard, shrill. (Cronus Magnum lll Amp, Focal Aria 948 Speakers, Denon DCD 1700NE CD Player, Shunyata Gamma Cables).

I have an all Ayre system with Vandersteen 5A speakers.   I thought I heard something "harsh" coming from the left one.....after trying many things Vandersteenb repair guy told me to remove the mid/tweeter from that left one ( a difficult thing but done).   He said he couldn’t find anything, yet after getting ithe speakers back and installed  (another difficult task) I could swear I heard the same  issue.   Vandersteen told me to remove the speaker again....after examining the mid, he said he fixed something.   I got it back and the "issue" was. still there.  All of this was carried out after years of searching.  Today  listened to the system without my hearing aids....... that issueI heard before was gone....also sounded like a bag was put on my head.    Check everything ......very expensive, time consuming, aggravating hobby.