Magnepan 1.7 too bright, HELP

If your tweeters are on the outside swap the speakers from left right placing the tweeters on the inside then toe the speakers in. This will mellow out the top end and it may ever improve your imaging.

How many hours on the 1.7's although used they may not be broken in yet. Also tell us about the room. How big, lots of glass, hardwood or carpet, furniture. How are the 1.7's setup? How far off the back wall, toed in? How much? Next to a TV or wall units? All of these things will effect SQ. Planar speakers tend to be fussier in setup than dynamic speakers.

room,room and room...forget the cables and concentrate on the room.

I am not surprised you find the combination of gear currently harsher/too bright. I would suggest a cable set change (I have been unimpressed with single smaller gauge wires) and that you use the Denon 2900 as transport to an Eastern Electric Minimax DAC (reviewed by myself for Dagogo.com).

If you obtain a good quality digital cable the Denon/Minimax combo is extremely good and will give you the following benefits:

1. Massive upgrade in sound quality (i.e. detail, definition, sound stage, etc.) Note: The detail and definition is never the problem; the problem is how it is presented tonally.

2. Addition of tubes to mellow out the sound from all the mid-level SS components. This will assist in addressing the harshness, poor tonality.

3. The EE DAC has its own attenuation, so you can feather the output of the DAC in relation to the preamp. This allows you to have whatever degree of brightness or warmth you wish. It is an extremely effective way to tonally control the system.

You can get far, far better sound from your rig; you are not anywhere near the limit of its capacity. This should be welcomed news to you, as you will likely be able to approach your ideal sound with some more work on the rig. :)

I have never liked Rotel amps with Magnepans, and in general I like Rotel amps, and use one for home theater.

I use anticables with my 1.6QRs. They are not bright at all. I'm guessing it is the room. Treat the corners behind the speakers. It may also be the dennon.

I agree with Tkmetz the anti cables and Rotel may be the culprits, I am not familiar with the Emotiva.

Maggies are known to be sensitive to the input signal and will be bright unless fed a quality signal.

Also make sure to dampen the first reflection points on the walls, floor and ceiling in your room, maybe even a ficus tree behind them to diffuse high end energy.

good luck

I would definitely look to replace the anticables. I have found them to be too bright with every combination of equipment I have used them with. Also, the Rotel 1080 amp sounds a little tilted up in the upper midrange to me when I heard on in my system a couple of years ago.

Hopefully, changing just the speaker cables will make a big enough difference.

I would try MAC CuQ..........very smooth, but detailed with a huge soundstage.

Good luck.

Sorry, I also might add to try some different interconnect cables too.

You could try to dampen the wall behind the speakers and the side walls. You could also get a 2ohm or even a 3ohm resistor and try that, but normally dipoles need some type of acoustic treatment.