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

A lot of the speakers that have very fast impulse response sound harsh or bright with less than stellar electronics. Digital is especially tough on those drivers. I have been in the High end sales arena and most of the problems were people putting average electronics on extremely revealing speakers. I also have noted that the popular metal dome tweeters that are maligned used foam internal damping which breaks down and makes them sound horrible when that happens. I have seen 5 yr old tweeters rendered horrid by the foam degradation and anything over 10 yrs old has to be replaced. I shot several videos of the D25 and D26ag tweeters internals being bad.

B&W 603 s2. Harsh, dry, lack of engagement.

WOW, came here to add to the TOPIC, but I see it turned into some type of argumentative discussion that the moderator could not seem to 'reel in'.   But I would like to add............

Being a Klipschorn owner for 14 years which I enjoyed, I decided to try one of their Reference Premier towers.  So, bought the Klipsch flagship RP-280F models.  Liked them at first, but after a few months, I realized that the titanium, horn loaded tweeter was a bit too 'forward' to my liking.  I bought a quality pair of L-PADS and installed them using the bi-amp inputs to the tweeters.

Running the control to it's midpoint really helped.  But, after a time, I decided that it was just a bandaid and decided to do a complete departure from horns, cones and domes.  So, bought a completely new system.  Martin Logan eStats (after a long audition at my local brick and mortar audio dealer), and an amp and preamp of John Curl design.  If anything, the electrostats are a bit on the warm side, however, at 91 DB efficient, they have plenty of dynamic range, and in NO WAY do they fatigue the ears.  Keep in mind, the cross over is at 380 Hz. so the panel covers a wide range before the bass module comes into play. 

And the concerns about the blending of the two drivers an issue?,  those days are over with the latest models.   I DID just add the Dynamo 1600X to add the bottom octave below 35Hz.

So, there is my honest story.

Thiel 3.6 did not like the metal dome tweeter. 

I'm struck that this thread exploded in all the tedious controversy & name-calling so many threads do. WTF?

It's a pretty straightforward topic by OP. Here's my answer:

-- in the mid-'80s when Infinity was coming on like gangbusters, I bought one of their cheaper floorstanders w/planar tweeter & a 10" polypropylene woofer. Not only was this thing brighter than hell, but that woofer audibly "bounced" like a medicine ball hitting a trampoline. Awful speakers

-- and a couple years ago, in the dying twilight of my attempts to use powered monitors for music. I got a pair of Yamaha HS7 powered monitors modded by ZenPro. I burned them in faithfully, then put them in the desktop system where they sounded like ass immediately & forever. I didn't last 2 days--yanked 'em out & put back in whatever I had previously.

No amount of money paid is worth sonic suffering after...