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Speaker shootout update; aggressive treble eliminating some (fairly?)

I've been trying out speakers in a complicated shoot out, both bookshelves and towers — all in my home with my gear. I'm looking for speakers obtainable up to about $4k but could go up (or down) a bit if the right thing came along.

Basic facts: All speakers were run in at least 100 hours. Room is 27 x 14 x 6.5 ceilings. Powering with all QS tubes, 60w, NOS, tube R2R dac, and decent cables. No terrible reflection points; room not overly live or dampened. REL R 328 sub available but I did most listening without it.

Recent auditions, type:

Klipsch RP 600-M (budget singleton of the group)
Fritz Rev Carbon 7 mk II (bookshelf, 2 way, soft dome)
Focal 936 (tower, 3 way, inverted metal)
Martin Logan Motion 60s XTi (tower, 3 way, AMT)

Coming soon:

Salk SS 6M (bookshelf, 2 way, beryllium)
Dynaudio Evoke 30's (tower, 3 way, soft dome)

Let me speak just to the problems, rather than what was good about the speakers. So far, I've found the Klipsch, Focal, and especially the Martin Logans were all too bright — forward, aggressive, "turn it down" treble.

The ML's were the most impossible to tame and hardest to listen to on more tracks. (I did a lot of hanging of towels and other dampeners and other soft things to try to see if I could bring them to heel. I varied the recordings used. Changed cables/wires. No luck.)

The Focals were occasionally too bright; their bigger problem was a bit too much energy in my small listening space. They were better when I plugged their ports with socks.

I'm looking forward to how the next two speakers sound. The Dynaudio towers, I notice, are 10 inches shorter and half the weight of the other towers; not sure what that might mean, but it could just be right size for my space. I'm looking forward to seeing if the Salks bring more detail to the treble without also being too rolled off or harsh.

Hearing is very personal for physiological and taste reasons. However, if anyone has any thoughts about why I might be experiencing some of the phenomena I am (harsh treble, especially) based on my room or gear, etc., that might help me understand factors I'm not fully appreciating. Thanks.


128x128hilde45
jackd
1,066 posts
 
@hilde45 

I just finalized the deal this morning so I won't have them until later in the week but if the stands are built anything like my Timbernation rack being solid should be the least of your worries.  My five shelf rack weighs over 120 lbs and is built out of solid 2" maple.  The stands that are coming with the Harbie's look to be built of the same stock so they probably weigh around 40 lbs a piece. Call Chris on the phone and discuss it with him but remember he is two hours ahead of you. First thing is to decide on a lower or adjustable chair and have the wife make the ear measurements along with the measurement from the bottom of the cabinet to the middle of the tweeter.  One minus the other should give you the height of your top plate. Chris can then adjust the post length to get you the height you need.  I have always been curious about Harbeth but for some reason never tried them as I gravitated toward Reynaud instead.  Will be interesting to hear the contrast between the and the Carrera Be.
jtcf's avatar
jtcf
1,617 posts
 
Hilde they're finally there!Congrats!
@jakd congrats to you too!I'm pretty sure I'm buying the C7ES 3s that I had on loan.He's buying new speakers and was kind enough to let me have them for a few days when my eyes lit up and told him I was interested.Nice that you got the stands too:-)
djones51
4,947 posts
 
What did you play to get those graphs? You didn't smooth it. How do they sound?
brownsfan
1,508 posts
 
@hilde45,  I looked at your REW frequency response curves.  At a quick glance, they don't look that bad to me.  Most rooms that are not custom built for audio that are well treated will still show plus or minus 5 dB below 300 Hz.  I usually change the scale so I can get a good feel for the plus minus range.  I would suggest you also click on the spectrograph and waterfall tabs and generate the plots.  You should be able to see where your long decays are.  If you have long decays in higher frequencies, that can make a room sound bright even if your frequency response is pretty flat.  Also take a look at the impulse graphs.  I like to see the impulse graph achieving room noise level by about 300 ms.   You might like a bit more.  It looks like your deep nulls are in the statistical zone where moving your mic an inch or two can really change the graph.  In other words, don't pay attention to the details above 400 Hz or so.   You could look at the psychoacoustic smoothing frequency response and get a feel for what kind of balance you have between low and high frequency.  
I don't know what to make of the asymmetry in that sharp null close to 200 Hz.  It must be associated with the room asymmetry on the right and left sides.  It looks like a pretty deep null, but it is narrow, so it may not give you much trouble.  But you might figure out what the exact frequency is and play that tone while you are walking around the room.  
hilde45's avatar
hilde45 OP
4,974 posts
 
@jackd  Thanks for the instructions on measuring. I like your comments on stability; I don't want anything too resonant, but the black metal stands one fills with sand are not that attractive to my eye.

@jtcf Those seem like really nice speakers. If we were neighbors, it would be fun to speaker swap! (As long as you're not violating any vows.)

@djones51 I just played the sweep tone that folks here were mentioning. The speakers sound good — a more detailed description is coming, but they are not harsh or aggressive at all. That bullet's been dodged. (Talk about burying the lede; that's the answer to this entire thread!)

@brownsfan  Appreciate your feedback. I'll do another measurement soon (I'm moving the speakers around a bit) and will try to generate additional graphs. I need to look up what an "impulse graph" is, to be honest. But I'll do one of those, too. Let's see if that weird null at 200 hz is reproduced, and where, and then I'll walk around a bit to see what's going on.




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