Why am I experiencing listener's fatigue?

I'm not an expert, but I think you understand it correctly. Could you please keep me posted on what happens. I am just curious what will be the solution for you. thanks

Just a follow up to this old thread. I recently bi wired the 805's with some plain speaker wire.( I sold my cardas wire ). This helped take out some of harshness in the treble to my surprise. Anyone reading this who has bw's should bi wire them and follow just what the manufacturer recommends. Another thing is the stingray coupled with the metal tweeters on the 805 i have read by an interviewer that this could in fact cause brightness. This also could be a contributing cause. Also i think the concrete stands are highmass which can be a good thing but one thing they dont do is dampen. I think since the 805's have threads in the bottom of their cabinets that they were meant to be coupled to a stand to transfer resonances and have them damped. I think heavy stands filled with sand and coupled to the speaker is the best situation. The blu tac i was using was probably too thick as well (the size of a pinball ) This i think isolated the speaker. A very very thin layer of blu tac would be better so that energy can transer to the stand but in the case of concrete even then there wont be much dampening. All this might effect imaging but perhaps this might be another possible culprit for the fatigue i was experiencing. A cardas golden reference interconnect helped too , as my diy interconnect i suspect, is a bit forward and harsh. Also i have logged another 150 hrs on the speakers which saw a more tonally balanced sound emerge. The woofers on these things are so rigid and well built that i would bet there are even more breaking in thresholds ahead if you have the patience to wait for them.

Summarizing: likely culprits:

not bi wired, manley / metal tweeter bad combo, poor speaker mounting, bright interconnect, speaker not fully broken in, turning up volume too loud to try to compensate exaccerbated the problem and symptoms

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Good to hear you were able to tame the brightness a little. I found that using Acoustic Zen Satori Shotgun speaker cables and Acoustic Zen Matrix Reference Mk.II interconnects in my system took my N803s to another level completely. Very smooth sound, no brightness, no fatigue. Also, I added EchoBusters Corners behind the speakers and that helps a lot as well. Biwiring the B&Ws is the way to go. What you may also consider is another set of tubes for the Manley. I would suggest contacting Kevin at Upscale Audio. He would be able to give you an advise on what tubes to use to get all the detail without harshness. Anyway, good to see the follow up.

Classic B&W syndrome.

of course it is Larry. Welcome B&W bashers to this thread