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.
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@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 foundand 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. |
@aewarren I remember SpeakerLab. And I remember as a teen the pair of DAS6 that me and a friend moved out of my pops shop and back to the apt to set up in my room. He was not happy at first but never took them back or really said much about them. I had those for quite some time, pretty decent speaker for $0! As for the original question, Klipsch have always been bright and meh to my ears for the most part. Various JBL designs, Meridian, Martin Logan (1998, 20005-2010), were all on the brighter side of things and just didn’t do it for me. I’ve managed to get a hold of a pair of speakers that I can’t describe as being dull, bright, boring, unexciting, lethargic, or simply lacking, to my ears. I’m mulling over inserting a tube based pre-amp into the signal chain, but that’s just to see if I like that sound in my setup. Aside from that, I enjoy spending my spare time finding new music to listen to and not obsessing over "am I hearing enough detail" "is the sound edgy",etc. I’m near Santa Clara CA. I need to check out a retailer and hear some stuff. Any recommendations? |
I would have to say B&W. I went and auditioned the CDM1NT back in the day and thought they were tremendous! I bought them on the spot. However after extended periods of listening my ears would ring (yes I must confess I do like to listen at louder levels). When a fellow enthusiast directed me to Dynaudio and I listened (and sold the B&W's for the Danes) it was only then I realized the B&W's were on the bright side in comparison to Dynaudio. This was 20 years ago mind you... I had to sell off all my gear during my divorce and have been out of the game for 20 years. But at least now getting back in I knew which speakers to buy. So I went with Dynaudio Excite. Weirdly I was questioning everything I remembered as I found the Excites to be a bit on the bright side. Still had that tremendous soundstage and detail that I remember with the Audience line, but now with a bit of harshness...Ended up selling the Excites for Evoke and I'm back in Nirvana :) |
First off, I tend to gravitate towards speakers with an emphasized top end, but end up regretting it after sustained listening after higher volumes. - above 70 dB. The older Boston Acoustics - A100, A150 - could fatigue my ears in a second if cranked up. Lots of sizzle. The KEF LS50’s will also attack you if you point them directly at you; I hear the Meta’s aren’t so spikey. I thought any of the Elac bookshelves I listened to were smooth in their top end and never caused fatigue, but I never ended up keeping them around for long. Had some older Polk Audio ones which with also smooth but too prominent in the midrange for my tastes. Had a vintage McIntosh SS amp (and a Parasound A23+) which reined back the spikier ones. |
I just experienced turning wonderfully balanced truly involving speakers into god awful shriekers. Against my instincts, but to try what many strongly advised, I removed my two L-Pads (Brilliance and Presence) from each side. The horn tweeters dominated to a horrible degree. These original Electro-voice drivers/systems were designed with the AT37 12 db L-Pads as an important part of the system. ’Building-Block’ Kits https://products.electrovoice.com/binary/BB1,2,3,4,5%20EDS.pdf Mine were designed as 3 way originally, within a Fisher President II console. Middle of the AT37 was ’standard’, range up to +6db for soft/dead rooms; range down to -6db for live/hard rooms. |
ADC. The first pair of component speaks sold to me with my first system. We're talking 1971 or 1972. Sansui 350, Pioneer PL-A25 and these. Horrible sounding. Not the way they sounded in the showroom. An honest upstanding dealer took them back and honestly cannot remember what replaced them. Why all the JBL haters? Been a fan for 50 years. L36's, L26's, L110's, 4311b's, L166 Horizons and of course 3 sets of L100's. Always paired with McIntosh, they were made for each other. The JBL shortcomings were neutralized by the smooth laid back Macs and vice versa. "one person's meat is another person's poison. AB |
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I've been around long enough to have heard bad speakers poorly set up, good speakers poorly set up, good speakers well set up and well matched to the room with less than ideal ancillaries, but the only speakers I've ever heard where everything has come together are in my own room. At this point, I'd be hard pressed to know how to audition speakers. It is so rare to hear speakers optimally set up that it is anyone's guess if one is hearing a speaker's weakness or the room's characteristics. The probability of beating what I've got is not that great and trying to get the speakers optimally dialed in in my room is daunting. All that said, the worst I ever heard were Cornwalls back in the mid 80's. Just dreadful. Utterly boring and one note bass that sounded like someone was kicking the belly of a dead cow. The closest to well set up was a pair of Sonus Farber Cremonese. The speakers were well placed in a well treated room and showed some measure of their potential. Ancillaries were not up to the task. |
BIC AMERICA DV-84 pair. The treble was searing on some recordings, but the open airy sound and crystal clarity was simply awesome. They use the Vifa tweeter, which is very good. The crossover must have been mismatched, there was no midrange to take the lower freq’s. 2 passive 8” radiators & 2 active 8” drivers. Bought the DV-64’s, they sound great. BIC is still relavent. They need to bring back the classic speakers, they would sell much more. I would be in for 2-3 pairs if they made them....the old Formula line and the realta pair. The realta speakers were amazing! Gave to my cousin, he loves them. |
Epicure models 1 thru 5 had the eyeball tweeter. I thought they were ahead of their time with narrow front baffle wider in the back with rounded corners and bottom ported bass. I had the 5 I sold for ADS l9e, traded 1 pair of ear bleeders for another. Recently a friend gave me a pair of epicure model 3 I’m thinking of putting quality drivers in. |
it is funny to see people get defensive when their brand of speaker is called out to not sound good to other folks synergy and equipment matching is THE critical skill in this pursuit... some speakers innately play brighter and harsher than others... so then if one like what the speakers do otherwise, one finsd the right gear to minimize the deficiencies and accentuate the strengths... like most other pursuits it takes perseverance, knowledge, effort and $ to get it right |
I generally find that it’s the more ambitious designs that usually draw more attention to their faults than some less ambitious one. For example the speaker on the iPad if within its operating range, is perfectly well balanced and inoffensive. On the other hand I’ve yet to find an audiophile loudspeaker that comes anywhere near to being as well balanced. The Kerr K320s I heard a few years back did most things well. The ribbon tweeter did not draw attention to itself and neither did the box. It wasn’t perfect, and alas the price has shot up quite dramatically. I remember hearing some Vivid Audio speakers and whilst their advanced metal drivers had tremendous dynamics (I cant remember hearing any better) they did have an unpleasant sharpness to the treble that could get borderline painful. Hopefully more recent Vivid designs have tackled that issue. I once read that PSB M4U headphones are said to sound like a good pair of loudspeakers (they certainly didn’t in my experience but that’s another story) but what about the other way around?. Which loudspeakers sound the most like a good/great pair of headphones? No overhang, great dynamics, and seamless treble, quicksilver transients etc. Is it not fair to say that, apart from the chest thumping bass that some speakers are able to deliver, that headphones generally do everything better? I have hardly finished writing this and I can imagine the answer already, electrostatics! OK apart from electrostatics, which loudspeakers sound most like headphones? Do any of them? Or does that question need a separate thread all of its own? |
Is it not fair to say that, apart from the chest thumping bass that some speakers are able to deliver, that headphones generally do everything better?You know that your audio system is very good when the "timbre" of instrument sound natural and like me when your 7 pairs of headphones, 2 Stax, 1 hybrid, 2 dynamic, 1 magneplanar, did not give you any pleasure anymore because they are inferior to your working speakers...I listened mainly to headphones many years and bought all these headphones because i was not pleased by my speakers to begin with... Why the same speakers please me so much now? My audio system cost is 500 bucks, BUT is NOW rightfully embedded mechanically, electrically and especially acoustically... I read that often, that headphone are better, more detailed; it is not true; in my nearfield listening my speakers beat or are on par with my Stax for details...In regular listening position they trash dynamically and with more timbre naturalness all my headphones with almost the same details....My headphones are retired now for many months definitively....I will never use them again.... 😊 OK apart from electrostatics, which loudspeakers sound most like headphones?Any relatively good speakers well embeddded in the 3 working dimensions will beat most headphone for realism, naturalness and will be on par with details... Save for insanely costly headphone like Raal Sr1 for example.... I answered your post precisely because i read that all over the place 8 years ago, that headphones are most of the times better, and i believed it because i never experienced well embedded speakers before... And i owned dual concentric Tannoy (better than my actual Mission Cyrus that are good) at this time but badly embeddded... Then i go in rush to buy one headphone after the other .... Till the day i learned how to embed my audio system.... I trash my headphones after....😁 That is my story.... P.S. i sold my 2 pairs of Tannoy speakers because i believed this false opinion, i regret it to this day because the Tannoy are better than even my Mission Cyrus...The Mission well embedded make me trash all headphones...I never listen to my Tannoy at all well embeddded alas!... It is a pity.... You can understand now why this saying about headphones make me to react.... |
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B&W P5's. . . which I foolishly pared with Rotel components. Replacing the Rotel integrated with a Creek 5350 helped a little. The speakers might've sounded fine with tube gear. That was the last time I bought any audio gear based on how it sounded in a show-room and the last time I bought speakers with anything other than a soft-dome tweeter. In my home, it proved a very fatiguing system but I sure learned a lot as a result of buying it! |
I found all speakers tiresome until I put more effort into the acoustics of my room.Well said and better said than my own posts.... My best to you.... |
Human ears are DESIGNED to identify immediately the human voice TIMBRE in all acoustical settings.. Designed huh? Ooookay. Human speech is relatively new in our evolution but obviously important but just one aspect of survival of the species as it relates to hearing. W.r.t.. "tone" and emotion most mammals can detect that independent of other information context. It's not uniquely human. |
People argue because too many take perceived personal experience as fact. Then they argue that made up fact. I don't hear so much fatiguing speakers though they definitely exist, as much as fatiguing rooms incompatible with audio in general or with a specific speaker, hence why many view some high end speakers as bright. |
Designed huh? Ooookay. Human speech is relatively new in our evolution but obviously important but just one aspect of survival of the species as it relates to hearing. W.r.t.. "tone" and emotion most mammals can detect that independent of other information context. It’s not uniquely human."Designed" because language ALWAYS present an"irreducible complexity"on 2 levels... Human language are not reducible to signaling system, human language exist on 2 levels of reality: " real" and "imaginary" in the sense of the complex numbers and these 2 levels are always actual...In signaling system one level is only potential the other actual... When i signal to another animal to go there, i must point the place.... and add a sound... In human language the place continue" to exist" before the pointing and before the sound in the collective memory with the words representing it....It is a mutation of the brain that make human able to transport and convey this another Imaginary reality permanently... Also there is the "poetical" level and the "prosaic" level but i cannot explain it here it will be too long... Suffice to say that language exist on 2 levels at the same time, the brain processing the 2 one into the other at the same time... Also music and language begun together and comes from one another....speech and music are Body act not only mouth act...Language here also work on 2 levels simultaneously: the body and the mouth apparatus...Studies in the genesis of oral tradition demonstrated this fact long ago.... «Timbre is, beyond question, the primary parameter that allows us to discriminate between different vowels, but vowels also have intrinsic pitch, intensity, and duration. There are striking correspondences between the number of vowels and the number of pitches in musical scales across cultures: an upper limit of roughly 12 elements, a lower limit of 2, and a frequency peak at 5–7 elements. Moreover, there is evidence for correspondences between vowels and scales even in specific cultures, e.g., cultures with three vowels tend to have tritonic scales. We report a match between vowel pitch and musical pitch in meaningless syllables of Alpine yodelers, and highlight the relevance of vocal timbre in the music of many non-Western cultures, in which vocal timbre/vowel timbre and musical melody are often intertwined. Studies showing the pivotal role of vowels and their musical qualities in the ontogeny of language and in infant directed speech, will be used as further arguments supporting the hypothesis that music and speech evolved from a common prosodic precursor, where the vowels exhibited both pitch and timbre variations.» https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01581/full The recognition of human sound timbre and speech is more immediate and more faster than any other prepared or artificial sounds....Survival of human group ask for that... «Human listeners seem to have an impressive ability to recognize a wide variety of natural sounds. However, there is surprisingly little quantitative evidence to characterize this fundamental ability. Here the speed and accuracy of musical-sound recognition were measured psychophysically with a rich but acoustically balanced stimulus set. The set comprised recordings of notes from musical instruments and sung vowels. In a first experiment, reaction times were collected for three target categories: voice, percussion, and strings. In a go/no-go task, listeners reacted as quickly as possible to members of a target category while withholding responses to distractors (a diverse set of musical instruments). Results showed near-perfect accuracy and fast reaction times, particularly for voices. In a second experiment, voices were recognized among strings and vice-versa. Again, reaction times to voices were faster. In a third experiment, auditory chimeras were created to retain only spectral or temporal features of the voice. Chimeras were recognized accurately, but not as quickly as natural voices. Altogether, the data suggest rapid and accurate neural mechanisms for musical-sound recognition based on selectivity to complex spectro-temporal signatures of sound sources.» https://asa.scitation.org/doi/10.1121/1.3701865 Then language designed on these 2 levels are uniquely for highly evoluated mammals like human or dolphins probably or other similar bio type in the cosmos ......It is an irreducible complexity working/processing phenomenon, a new stasis in the history of evolution.... Denying that is making appeal to an old static genetic innate paradigm like the Chomskyan one....The genetic code is no more perceived like in the sixties and seventies of the last century.... |
@ kenjit, "I remember hearing some Vivid Audio speakers and whilst their advanced metal drivers had tremendous dynamics (I cant remember hearing any better) they did have an unpleasant sharpness to the treble that could get borderline painful." which model? -------- I didn’t want to mention the exact model because I couldn’t remember for sure. However I did remember posting a summary on here not long afterwards on here. Here it is - from 26.09.2018 Best Loudspeakers for Rich Timbre? After weeks of waiting I finally got to visit The UK Audio Show 2018 (Woodland Grange, UK) at the weekend. They had some impressive speakers there including the curvy, strokeable Vivid Kaya 90 - amazing dynamics, scale, imagery and dare I say it, the merest hint of metallic tinged timbre? https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/best-loudspeakers-for-rich-timbre?page=5 |
For a speaker with sweet treble and no moving mass tweeter check out Lansche Audio. Mat www.jjaudiosolutions.com |
This is a generalized question. It depends greatly on your ears, your room. It depends greatly on what you are feeding into those bright harsh sounding speakers. If you are using aluminum or titanium drivers, horn compression drivers they can seem harsh or bright on the wrong electronics. I found using a tube amplifier smooths out the harshness and instead of being harsh and bright it is detailed and smooth and can listen for hours with no fatigue.. Certain solid state amplifiers will make bright speakers sound harsh it is all how you set your system up. |
Starting sixty years ago... the AR3's were pretty good, Bose 901s... were they a joke? My Time Window 3s were nothing much. Went trough all the B&W Models up to 800, they were just ok (although heard the well broken in new 802Ds, pretty good) then all Wilsons. the Watt Puppy 7s could peel paint if needed. My Yvettes with the new tweeters are very good, better than the first Sasha. Speech? You mean like Cohen? Good topic. |
Wow I can’t believe the negative crap I hear. Most of the speakers that were mentioned are pretty darn good.Most people dont know and dont understand that it is the acoustic that create the Sound quality on par and sometimes more than the electronic design.... Very few people has lived a complete transformation of S.Q. coming from speakers embedded in a rightful way in the right acoustical setting.... Simple.... They " magically" attribute sound to the speakers.... 😁 Saying that speakers X is "bright" make no sense most of the times save for very few small bad designed box.... They would better think about the huge impact of the acoustical setting of the room, the vibrations affecting their speakers and the noise floor of the house electrical grid.... |
Wilson Watt/Puppys. Not musical at all but more of a science experiment to see how much detail one can generate. Tried the Watt 3, 5, etc. Way too analytical like nails on a chalkboard. Various high end solid state and tube amps and cables. Even the lushest CJ gear sounded hard. But my wife loved the looks. And they were an easy sell due to the glowing magazine reviews. PS the Avalon Acurus and Eggleston Andra were similar to Watt just not quite so much of it. Tried many amps large and small, tube and ss and always result was hard and detailed sound, never felt like listening to the music. They delighted the new owner. |
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. |
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. |
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... |
ProAc are wonderful. Their true ribbon tweeter is sublime. Harbeths are easy to listen to but can be a bit boring, but certainly listenable. BTW the ML and a few others use the Heil AMT ( Air Motion Transformer) I’ve always found it a bit bright. Raidho are nice. Magico but very revealing and need the right everything to get them to sing. |
