Gmc56
I feel your pain LOL!!! I just went through the exact same thing you are with my Epos M5i's!!!
Question...how many hours do you have on the speakers??
See, I loved mine right out of the box, but then they changed and became brighter. I had to put alot of hours on before they tamed down a bit.
BUT...in the mean time, I tried everything...speaker cable, interconnects, new source, new amps...and you know what it turned out to be?? New amp!!!
I borrowed a buddy's tube pre...ran it with a solid state amp and now I have musical bliss!! BTW, I bought the set!!!
Epos LOVES tubes!!! The synergy is there...I went back to the cables I was running before and they sound really good now...vocals are great...wonderful depth and imaging...natural tone and textures...it's all there!!
Here's a rundown of my gear:
Sonic Frontiers SLF-1 with Brimar CV4024 tube
Mitsubishi DA-A10DC amp (diy silver interconnect from pre)
Arcam Alpha Original CD Player (non-oversampling mod)
Atlas Equator MKII Interconnect for the cd player
Supra Classic 2.5 Speaker Cable
As you can see, nothing fancy or high end but blends extremely well and it makes the Epos sing!!
My ears can't take bright or harsh edges to music either...I have some folk cd's that I could not listen to before and now they get played in regular rotation. That tells me plenty of what the speakers like!!
Too, I have some recordings that are pretty badly done but now they are at least listenable!!
This has been my experince since I bought the speakers at Christmas time...which btw, I bought on a recommendation without hearing them!!! But they had so much potential that I didn't want to get rid of them and I'm sure glad I didn't cause I am very much enjoying them now!!!
I think this would be the best place to start :) Can you borrow a tube setup or take your speakers somewhere that you could listen to them with one??
All the best!!