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

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. 

All you Agon members pointing fingers at Klipsch need to get your lockdowned self out of the house and go hear what they are currently offering. These aren't your father's (grandfather?) klipsch of yore.

Oz

All JBL, B&W and Klipsch .

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.

  

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.

Not high end but the Triangle Borea BR03 I found very bright and gave me just terrible headaches. I actually loved the sound itself and thought it was a great imaging speaker, but I literally felt like my brain was melting.

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

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.

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.

@kenjit 

If self-parody were an art form, your work would be in high demand.

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 :)

@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?

Any speaker made after 1990 that has been with soundstaging and air as a main criterion is all of the things you want to avoid.

@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. 

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

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.

@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.

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

milpai

Understood.

I found to my utter surprise that the D7 sounded somewhat wiry, hard and forward in the high frequencies and I had to keep turning it down.Confused by this I looked up other user reports and found a number of other people felt the same, which was interesting.

Not long after I was in another audio store and sat down in front of a pair of speakers playing, not taking notice of the brand. I noticed a similar quality that I found off-putting. When I looked at the speakers closely it turned out they were Spendor A7 floor standing speakers.

I guess I just don’t get along with the New Spendor Sound of their modern floor standers.

(Which isn’t to say I’m only about cozey, comfy rolled off sound. I use Thiels and Joseph speakers at home as well as Spendors, which are very extended in the high frequencies, but they don’t cause my ears to shut down like the Spendors did).

@prof 
I am surprised by the Spendor D7. I have auditioned it with some really good front end electronics. They were not fatiguing at all. I would say, I auditioned them for a max of 20 mins continuous listening. But I do keep hearing that they do not sound like vintage Spendor sound. Don't know what that means though.

Can you revise the question to be "Which did not..."?
Much shorter list.

Why is this so?

A clue:

What ALL speakers that sound too bright had in common? 

Can you revise the question to be "Which did not..."?
Much shorter list.

Spendor D7.

Ain't no Spendor sound there, really.   I found it a more fatiguing speaker than almost any other I auditioned.

ANY speaker except Magnepan's will give you all of that mess and more.

Sorry, but that's the way the listening goes!

Cheers!

I almost purchase a pair of Martin Login Motion 60's.  Fortunately, I went back to the retailer and listened to them for two hours.  Glad I did because I found their ribbon tweeters to be to bright.  Ear fatigue is a reality and it is really important to listen to a speaker for a couple of hours to make sure you will enjoy them for years.

Very interesting, and reminds me of this interesting quote from Alan Shaw, designer of Harbeth speakers:

The core issue is this. Forget music entirely. Imagine that it never existed, had never been invented. Play well recorded human speech on those so-called high end speakers and the vast majority - practically all of them - have colorations, peculiarities, weird subjective characteristics that are in many cases simply laughable.

So then, why will you never find a hifi reviewer who even attempts to grade loudspeakers by listening to human speech over them? Absurd and pathetic, considering that we are surrounded by speech - not music - all day and every day, and unsurprisingly, our ear/brain is finely tuned to interpreting extremely subtle nuances in speech, even on a telephone line. If we were to be talking now on the restricted bandwidth of a phone line, we could understand each other’s emotions, guess at our age and education, probably income, detect if we are being truthful or concealing something, decide if we are friendly or trying to deceive us or sell us something and so on just by microscopic nuanced changes in loudness, pitch, strain and delivery. Human speech is the ultimate loudspeaker test tool because of the way it can impose its own nature on the underlying subtleties of reproduced speech, changing the listener’s interpretation a little or a lot.

Thanks very interesting post.... the most important post of this thread indeed....

Human ears are DESIGNED to identify immediately the human voice TIMBRE in all acoustical settings.... Music was created around this fact....This is history, history of science, history of music, history of acoustic.....

A good speakers must always be able to give the natural human voice timbre first and last period.... Recognition of human timbre is one of the most important social and biological fact for survival and bonding....Music was created and centered around this fact.... This is very fundamental for acoustic, Alan Shaw is very right....

I am glad to know that because even if my actual speakers satisfied me, i sensed that the Harbeth could do more... I think i was right.... 😊 A designer who know that natural voice timbre phenomenon to be fundamental know the essential for me ....

Ultimate test for speakers are NOT some numbers measures but human voice test....Contradicting this fact will always reveal ignorance about what is music for humans....Music is not any  sound, it is a voice/ timbre/ centered event..... 

What stopped me was the way they reproduced John Lennon’s vocals on Across the Universe. They were simply plain wrong. I’d never heard Lennon’s voice sound like that in the mid/lower register before.

Very interesting, and reminds me of this interesting quote from Alan Shaw, designer of Harbeth speakers:

The core issue is this. Forget music entirely. Imagine that it never existed, had never been invented. Play well recorded human speech on those so-called high end speakers and the vast majority - practically all of them - have colorations, peculiarities, weird subjective characteristics that are in many cases simply laughable.

So then, why will you never find a hifi reviewer who even attempts to grade loudspeakers by listening to human speech over them? Absurd and pathetic, considering that we are surrounded by speech - not music - all day and every day, and unsurprisingly, our ear/brain is finely tuned to interpreting extremely subtle nuances in speech, even on a telephone line. If we were to be talking now on the restricted bandwidth of a phone line, we could understand each other’s emotions, guess at our age and education, probably income, detect if we are being truthful or concealing something, decide if we are friendly or trying to deceive us or sell us something and so on just by microscopic nuanced changes in loudness, pitch, strain and delivery. Human speech is the ultimate loudspeaker test tool because of the way it can impose its own nature on the underlying subtleties of reproduced speech, changing the listener’s interpretation a little or a lot.

@uncledemp ,

"Humans mean-mouthing humans over stereos, really? It’s a stereo. You’d insult and fight with someone over a stereo?"


Maybe not me and you, but for some dealers, manufacturers and designers, their very livelihood may depend upon the success of their products.

Perhaps it’s might be more helpful to the designers if we could be more specific about any perceived problems we encounter in our experience with various loudspeakers?

It can’t be easy of course.

I heard some very highly regarded 2 way floorstanders a few years back and was very close to buying them there and then.

What stopped me was the way they reproduced John Lennon’s vocals on Across the Universe. They were simply plain wrong. I’d never heard Lennon’s voice sound like that in the mid/lower register before.

It seemed to be an issue with the way the tweeter was crossing over to the woofer and switching to a tube amp didn’t make the issue go away.

The tweeter happened to be the Seas Excel, a renowned and not inexpensive design.

So I could only assume that the designer, perhaps in his wish for optimal dispersion had crossed it over at just a little too low a point for its comfort.

It was a shame as that design was otherwise a highly revealing one and unusually clean through rest of its operating range.

@kenjit

If I had a nickel for every time you were dishonest in your posts, I’d be able to purchase some very fancy cables.

Of the many archived posts relating to the subject speaker, the "bright and harsh" complaint is almost never found, and the vast majority of reactions are quite positive. It’s that simple. 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.

But wait … let me guess. Your next painful (for all readers) contortion will be to argue that all of those who liked the speakers may have been suffering from hearing loss, and were therefore unable to discern the brightness and harshness.

smh

 I responded to a specific objection to the speaker, not a broad one.

What was the objection? Bright and harsh? In which case I will ask you again. Why is it odd that some people think a speaker, in this case the GMA, sounds bright and harsh whereas others dont? Could it not be equally odd that you fail to hear the brightness and harshness that others have reported? Could it be that you have hearing loss? Could it be that you are refusing to admit the truth? Could it be that you have bad hearing? There are clearly many possibilities that would need to be looked at.

Why don't you do readers a favor now, and stop polluting this thread with your biased, and frequently dishonest posts.

Why would my opinions be biased? for what purpose? If they sounded world class, why would i lie and say they sounded horrible? I'm afraid your argument makes no sense. You are the one that is biased because you believed everything Johnson said despite there being no evidence. You have been duped I'm afraid. You refuse to condemn the fact that Johnson had a proclivity to having posts that were inconvenient deleted. You have nothing to say about the reasons I mentioned that the GMA sounded bright and harsh. Face it. You are in denial. 

Making a list asap!!

How is it odd that some people dont like the sound of a speaker? It happens with every speaker.

It's not odd at all, but you have predictably produced yet another dishonest straw man. I responded to a specific objection to the speaker, not a broad one. 

Why don't you do readers a favor now, and stop polluting this thread with your biased, and frequently dishonest posts. 

@hilde45
I totally agree with you, it is human nature. And I’m certainly not disputing the validity of your post/reference.

We live comfortably as long as our human nature sensibilities agree. Unfortunately, when our human natures differ, in extreme cases we slaughter one another. (And everything in between.)

Fortunately, most of us can sort ourselves out to some degree and keep our darkest nature at bay. Even small things like respecting each other on an audio discussion board is a step closer. 

My point is it’s not cool to develop a habit of abusing others. It hurts feelings and is unsettling, especially to tender hearted people. I think those who do it online, do it offline, they just have to choose victims more carefully.

@glupson" Virtually all Bowers & Wilkins (except one older model)."

I had the very same experience, somewhere in the late 80s I listened to B&W model?, I think 800, anyway the biggest they made with all McIntosh tube gear and they sounded great.   Now I can't listen to them at all.  Their room at RMAF 2019 was atrocious. Oh well.

But that's not the worst.......

Plasmatronics, with the ozone tweeter.  A point source radiating 360.
No upper limit on the tweeter because it in effect has zero mass.  OMG talking about ear splitting...window shattering.  And the salesman was gushing over the accuracy!

I didn't suggest that you made up the claim. I simply found it odd, given both my experience, and the relative lack of similar opinions from other owners whose feedback I have read.

How is it odd that some people dont like the sound of a speaker? It happens with every speaker. 
And given that Johnson had a proclivity to have inconvenient posts deleted at his request, is it any surprise that we didnt see many negative feedback on his speakers?

@luisma "happy wife, happy life" 
She saved you by pulling you away from those garish colors.

How can someone can passed a judgement on any speakers in an uncontrolled and untreated room?

This the the proof almost no one lived through an acoustic room transformation...

A too warmish, too low centered speakers cannot be elevated to the "lark ascending highs" for sure; in this case if they are perhaps not bad but really are not so good speakers....

But a too harsh, too cold and too detailed speakers with fatiguing highs is most of the times the results of an undercontrolled or undertreated room...I already detected many times horrible unnnatural harsh sound coming from the costlier speakers it seems...No way that was the room unbeknownst to the listener boasting about them....

It is easy to put a fatiguing speaker on the other end of the spectrum if it is not a design defect....Most very costly speakers are not defect design....For sure little box speakers with no bass are fatiguing without redemption... But Focal speakers need a room for example we cannot fault the design....

Then most really should put their critic with more caution....

"Taste" is the audio word signifying most of the times i dont know what i speak about...



A natural timbre instrumental sound coming from some speakers are always what musicians and true audiophiles wanted and it has nothing to do with "taste".... It is always a relatively "objective-subjective" experience with the musicians in an orchestra and more of a consensus among them and an habit than a particular "taste"....It is a "learned" experience all along their musical life.... Not a taste....

@bdgregory 

I heard what I heard, and have no reason to make it up. Not sure why you think my claim dubious.

I didn't suggest that you made up the claim. I simply found it odd, given both my experience, and the relative lack of similar opinions from other owners whose feedback I have read.

I recently home auditioned the highly lauded KEF LS50 Meta with McIntosh solid state and hybrid amplification. They were listenable but didn’t wow me. They lacked high-end presence and the sound was just kinda boring. Perhaps because I’m used to them, but I much preferred my old DefTech SM-450s in my smallish room.

Focal Aria. Lacquer finish had orange peel to it. Detail in speakers were great, but the range of the speaker didn't seem to come together. A lack of unity between frequency. 

I have owned a pair of Klipsch RP-5000 and I have auditioned the Forte IIIs. I found them both to be hard to listen to for long periods of time. The La Scalas I auditioned had a nice airy sound to them, but the sound stage and imaging were lacking. Many people say that Focals are bright. I have not found this to be true. I can listen to my Aria 936s all day and they never annoy. I power them with a Hegel H390 and use a Audiolab 6000CDT transport played through the Hegel DAC.
Speakers I have owned:
Infinity Kappa 7    Klipsch RP-5000     KLH Kendall      Focal Aria 936

There are no absolutes. Everything posted so far is purely anecdotal.

I just recently listened to a speaker that sounded harsh and fatiguing on one particular amp and then simply glorious and unparalleled on another amp. Not to even mention the myriad of other components that play a role. 
It is not necessarily the speaker, it is rather how they matched up with certain components.

@uncledemp It is human nature, alas.

"And yet if every desire were satisfied as soon as it arose how would men occupy their lives, how would they pass the time? Imagine this race transported to a Utopia where everything grows of its own accord and turkeys fly around ready-roasted, where lovers find one another without any delay and keep one another without any difficulty: in such a place some men would die of boredom or hang themselves, some would fight and kill one another, and thus they would create for themselves more suffering than nature inflicts on them as it is." 

https://eafz.blogspot.com/2011/10/schopenhauer-essay-on-suffering-of.html

@whipsaw - I bought the Europe’s after reading all of the rave reviews. All I can say is every other speaker I placed in that room didn’t sound harsh and fatiguing as the Europe’s did. I guess I needed to power them with a Rowland amp, not Conrad-Johnson. I heard what I heard, and have no reason to make it up. Not sure why you think my claim dubious.

Meanwhile, back at the topic. .   

In my home, Vandersteen 1Cs, even though I tried many upstream upgrades.

Elsewhere, anything from KEF, most of the Paradigms I have heard, and all the PSB models I gave heard.

I think most of the Focals could easily end up high in this ranking. I used to have the Mezzo Utopia and although paired with Naim it was quite fatiguing.

I ASK AGAIN: PLEASE NO MORE ARGUING OVER A SPEAKER BRAND THAT DOESN’T EVEN EXIST ANYMORE! FFS!

@greg7

With the exception of my very first post, I haven’t really been arguing over a speaker brand, but rather pointing out the bias and dishonesty displayed by a very active member of this community. You may not care to read about that, either, but they are two very different things, and the exposure may have value in helping some members to view kenjit’s comments on other topics with a circumspect eye.

The GR Research 2 way with the ribbon tweeter. Forget the name. Was so poorly integrated you can immediately tell which driver is which and obvious you close your eyes and can just about draw in the air where the boxes are.