Speakers sound too bright.


I just bought a new pair of Martin Logan 60xti speakers.  They are too bright and fatiguing.  I would like to avoid returning them.  I've tried toeing them in and out.  I cant get them further than 1ft away from the wall (back of speaker to wall).  I have a about 1-2 hrs of play time on them.  Not sure if break in will help settle the upper frequencies down. Any suggestions...?

rwalsh07

Thanks everybody.  I'm going to let them break in and give them a chance.  I will make the suggestion of jumper wire and the bi-wire option.

That being said, what about the polarity discovery that I mentioned above in the thread.  One speaker had a positive polarity and the other speaker had a negaive polarity.  Speaker cable connection are running positive to positive and negative to negative.  Is the polarity discrepancy normal.  Do I leave it as is?

You might also try changing the tubes in your Freya+.
 

I found that a combination of Ken-Rad VT231’s in the gain stage and 5692’s in the buffer stage (RCA or CBS Hytron) to have the most solid bass. For a more budget friendly alternative, get Sylvania 6SN7 GTB’s from the 1960’s (about $35 each from Brent Jessee) and you might find that your high end is now airy without being so bright. BTW, any Martin Logans I’ve ever auditioned have been bright to my ears. But don’t discount the tubes in your preamp, especially if they are new production. They can sound hard.

something interesting last night, I checked the polarity last night and my left speaker was positive and the right was negative. Everything was plugged in color coordinated between the amp and speakers.

OP, I am not sure I understand what you are saying about L speaker being + and R speaker being -?  Are you saying that although they are hooked up correctly they are out of phase?  How did you measure or test for that?

I used an app to determine polarity of each spekaer.  The left resulted with a polarity of positive.  The right speaker after the test resulted with a polarity of negative.  Should the polarity of both speakers be positive?  I'm not sure how to determine "phase".