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

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