How to tame brightness

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!!

Might I ask - please name one or two recordings which you find too bright. Also, how far are you sitting from the speakers?

Gmc56...as is typical of Agon :-), you ask a question and you will get 16 responses with 16 different suggestions. While an issue like "excessive brightness" can be caused by many different things, I suspect there are a few things from this list you want to try first. Eventhough, I suggested speaker toe-in and room treatments as a first attempt, having read through all of the suggestions, if I were you, I would try Duke's (or Audiokinesis') recommendations first, given his knowledge of speakers and their interactions with rooms. Many speaker designers use felt inserts around the tweeter in their designs to tame brightness, so his suggestion of buying an after-market felt product that you can fit around your tweeter seems eminently reasonable to me. You should check out the link he provided. His other suggestion of finding a point in the vertical plane (where your ears are relative to the tweeter that is) where the sound is not as bright is also an easy and cheap way of finding a fix. The fix will incorporate finding seating that either has adjustable height or is fixed at the height where the sound presentation is no longer bright. The seating height fix by the way can also be found in Jim Smith's book, "Getting Better Sound," which is probably one of the most cost effective investments to enhance system performance (no affiliation with him just a satisfied customer). If the felt and seating height adjustments don't cure your problem, then treating your room, changing cabling, and ultimately changing speakers (suggestions for soft domed tweeter are not off the mark in this respect)are the way to go. Good luck and let us know how it works out for you.

I have made some makeshift room acoustic adjustments which helped some. I also changed my speakers cables which also helped some. But there does seem to be a synergy issue between my amp and speakers as "sideways" mentioned.

I do use isolation on all my front end components. And thanks to everyone here for you input!

Greg

A lot of solid advice here. One thing I will add is I would suggest changing your Integrated Amp. I owned one for a very brief period and had system-brightness issues with a pair of JM Labs. I actually borrowed a friends less expensive Cambridge Audio Integrated and the issues disappeared. Not to mention, it sounded significantly better than the Audio Refinement.

At that point, I ended purchasing an Electrocompaniet ECI-3 Integrated which I enjoyed for years with the same speakers and source. Anyway, that AR amp has a sonic hardness quality to it which may be your culprit. I would almost put money on it.

Good Luck!

-Chris