New amp listening fatigue: Distortion or ??????

Following this thread with interest as I sometimes experience similar situations.

i should add that I suffer from tinnitus, some days less so.

On days without tinnitus I can listen to music for hours, on other days not even 10 minutes.

Currently I think it’s my ears / mind that make the difference, not my system.

Another thought: room interactions? Maybe you need to reposition the speakers and or add room treatment now that your system is more revealing than before?

Your speakers have ceramic midrange drivers and RAAL ribbon tweeters- extremely revealing and downright brutal with a neutral revealing amplifier.  I have only heard two speakers that use ceramic drivers sound good to my ears- Marten and Von Schweikert.   Nothing else including Revel sounded good- at all. 

You are also coming from the ultra refined world of 300b tube amps, no wonder you are shocked.  

I also suspect phase / crossover interaction between the midrange and tweeter. 

I can't comment on the sound of your amplifier but do agree that many hours of run in can help it to sound better- e.g. 200-300 hours.  

I do not recommend EQ because it can cause just as many issues as it fixes and is not benign to the sound quality. 

Some things you can try-

1) Speaker positioning- you want to increase bass and smoothness.  Be careful and deliberate moving the speakers in 1-foot increments as your room will allow. 

Move them wider, closer to the wall, then farther from the wall.  At each position experiment with toe angle- from aiming perpendicular to the wall to aiming at a spot a few feet in front of you. 

Also experiment with stand height.  Too high and you lose bass reinforcement and increase midrange / treble energy.  Try lower stands that bring the tweeters 2-3 inches below ear level.  

Finally try different interconnects and speaker cables- with resolving speakers like yours they matter greatly.  Avoid silver plated hybrid cables and use only OCC copper.  

Although it is not a synergistic match with some burn in, positioning adjustments and re-cabling you might be able to salvage your system. 

My Philharmonic BMR monitors are the older style with scanspeak paper cone drivers. I built them from a Meniscus Audio kit and used all high-end Clarity Caps in the tweeter and mid driver circuits, for a smoother sound. It's true they are the most revealing and transparent speakers I've ever had, and I really like the way they sound. The thing is, they are not fatiguing with my Hegel. All my cables and interconnects are Canare copper. I may consider going back to a push/pull tube amp to use with these speakers. The reason I traded my 300b set amp is because it really couldn't drive those speakers and I feel the low power is a real limitation in speaker selection.

Before throwing more money into the system I would suggest to try optimising your current setup:

- Check speaker placement, toe in, distance to walls, room damping

- Check placement of components, do not stack but rather use a dedicated rack

- Check quality of source: Sometimes highly revealing systems might show shortcomings of the source

Your current system should be capable of sounding wonderful. 
 

Good luck!
 

This is a very timely thread for me but mine is a speaker change. Last week I hooked up a new pair of Falcons to replace my Harbeths. Both speakers are rated at the same sensitivity (83db).

Over the years I have owned many speakers ( 30+ pairs ) and never had this problem. The Falcons sounded so nice that I could have been playing them a bit too loud. Hopefully I didn’t do any permanent damage to my ears!