Which speakers did you find bright, fatiguing or just disappointing in some way?

This is not a real question. Remove it please moderators!

@mahgister   I have an answer to your question:  deficient set up.  Certainly I have heard bright speakers that I felt I could never own and enjoy, but there have been many mentioned in this thread that don't fit that camp, and I can only imagine that the weren't "cared and fed" well.

I have run speakers for the last 6 years that ride that razor's edge, and what I appreciate about them is that they reveal everything - - in the gear, in the cabling, in the mastering of the recordings, but, most importantly, in the music making.  When things aren't lined up well in my system, the result can be too much "sound" focused and not enough "music" focused.  But put in the sweat to tune the system, and I believe the reward is greater, more immersive in the emotion of the music and the thrill of the music making.  Every speaker has its "needs" to attend to, and if you don't address them (with respect to your room, other system elements, and taste), you don't realize their potential.

Fortunately, in my years of purchasing stereo equipment, I have never purchased speakers without first listening to them for an extended period of time.  Since I've been an audiophile for many decades, I can honestly say the the most fatiguing speaker that I have ever trialed were the Bose 901's.   They were "okay" for about ten minutes but became very poor to the ears after a full twenty minutes.  I ended up purchasing Quad ESL-57's after selling my ESS Translinear II's and AMT-4's.

They were from Radio Shack back in the 70's and we were cranking some Ted Nugent and then there was no Nuge.........

@whipsaw 

You still havent answered what reason i would have to be dishonest. You have nothing to support your allegations.

Of the many archived posts relating to the subject speaker, the "bright and harsh" complaint is almost never found

and i have already told you why that could be. Johnson may have had any negative posts deleted at his request as he did with mine. You admitted this is what he did with my posts so you dont know if it had happened on other occasions. Johnson was an active forum user here and on other forums and any posts that related to his speakers would attract his attention. I recall that any time something negative was posted, a handful of his followers would show up on the forum. I suspect Johnson may have been contacting these followers and asking them to post positive remarks to counteract any negative ones. This happened on various forums.

The specific criticism is very uncommon, hence the logical question of whether or not the problem may have been related to something other than the speakers themselves.

Nonsense. You wouldn't know how common it was unless you knew how many people had listened to GMA and out of those what percentage found them to sound bright and edgy. I have also found that most of the GMA  supporters were believers in Johnsons theories on time coherence. Given that to date this idea has never been found to be important or audible it diminishes the credibility of their opinion about how the speaker sounds. 

I have also told you several factors that caused it to be bright. You have failed to address these factors and put the blame somewhere else even though the reasons I gave were the most obvious explanation.

You have unfortunately lost the argument now.