Magnepan 1.7 too bright, HELP

There is a lot of good advice and good ideas here. The take home message is that most of what you have may not be the best match with the 1.7's.

I'm with Macdadtexas on the importance of good clean power. I use CAD 500 MB's with my Maggies. Unfortunately you are not going to spring 3-4K on an amp right now. You are trying to work on the cheap, so here is my hierarchy using mostly suggestions from the threads. Buy used to save money. Each one of these will help.
1) < $200 Deaden the corners, floor to ceiling. Glue Auralex panels to blue insulation pannels. You may be very surprised.
2) < $500 Promethius TVC volume control. I use a Promethius Ref 4 with my Maggies. You will want to watch the length of your IC's and use an amp with a reasonably high input impedence if possible.
3) < $700 I like the Eastern Electric DAC suggestion above. I've had Denon players with Maggies before and they were not a good match.
4) As Macdadtexas points out, you can do all of the above and still not completely fix the problem. But it sounds like you may need to wait a while before you can really get an amp that will do justice to the maggies. Just keep in mind that you are going to need to get the amp replaced at some point.

Your problem is simple,you have Ferrari speakers running on WalMart tires.Providing you have the financial resources you most definitely should replace the source and the amp.Cable upgrades will help but improvements will be less than dramatic.
I agree with others that have recommended room treatments.
I've owned several Magnepan speakers and I can provide you with some recommendations for equipment upgrades if you care to flip me a pm.

NOBODY has suggested the cure which worked for me.

My 1.6s were bright, too. And very beamy. Too much toe and the highs were nearly unbearable, while the center image was razor sharp and little sound extended beyond the outside edges of the speakers.
Tweeters in/out didn't make much difference.
Toe OUT until the balance was right and you could get a hole in the middle effect.

The cure? 15 or so years ago, Magnepan started shipping with the Mylar forward, to the listener. I kid you not, when I suggest FLIPPING THE PANELS around to listen to the pole piece side. This will improve dispersion to the point that a wider toe angle will be fine.....I am at about 10 or 11 degrees which is about 3 1/2 inches difference between measures of inside and outside of the speaker to the 'front' wall. Widening the toe will take you out of the tweeter 'hot spot' on axis and improve image while providing fine center fill and a near wrap-around sound field.

Save all that expense of cable / amp / dac / seance stuff until you finish experimenting with speaker orientation and placement.
At that point, some diffusion BEHIND and BETWEEN the speakers works wonders. At least you aren't running your Ferrari on Firestones.

My thoughts:

1. Use the spacers on the stand screws to tilt the panels back. If you do not have the original spacers provided by Magnepan then use a properly sized washer. Angling the panels back a bit will help with the hot top-end

2. ABSOLUTLEY replace the Emotiva; this piece is too bright and forward to use with Magnepans. Switch to a well-balanced tube preamp if possible

Confirm that your power amp can and will double-down it's output power into the 1.6's; if it does not, then switch to an amp that will. All Magnepan speakers need high current and an abundance of watts to sound their absolute best.

Additional thoughts:

Tweaking your room surroundings is good advice but on it's own that will not correct serious deficiencies in your upstream components. (a really poor room can ruin very good components, but in your situation it's the system matching of your pre amp and amp that is most likely causing 95% of your problem). I've auditioned the 1.6's and 1.7's extensively in my room and titling the panels back on their vertical axis should make a positive difference. If your amp is running out of power then the sound will harden and get bright. And, as I mentioned above the Emotiva is definitely bright.

I ultimately went with the 3.6's because they were a better match for my larger room and I felt that their top end was smoother overall than that of the 1.6's.

The Maggies are fantastic speakers and a true bargain at their prices (especially when you buy them used), but they absolutely require the best amplification and properly matched components.