Is it too bright or is it high resolution?

Thoughts:

Improper room treatment can make neutral speakers seem overly bright.

Ragged top ends are often mistaken for "high resolution" because they over-emphasize narrow parts of the audible spectrum. Several "high end" makers use this trick. Because you can hear certain details stand out, the average listener doesn’t realize what they are missing, or that it’s not very natural sounding.

Also, having speakers that can show differences between gear is not very useful in my mind. I want speakers that can reproduce music. The discernment of upstream gear is usually a sign of inferior design IMHO. A good speaker should sound great with a variety of amps.

There are exceptions when the nature of the speaker is such, it must be hard to drive. I’m thinking of Apogee type full bandwidth ribbons or electro-statics. Just no way to make them amp friendly.

Best,

E

By the way, I completely disagree with the idea that lack of time alignment has anything to do with brightness.

Some of the brightest sounding speakers to my ears where old Thiels. Perfectly time aligned. Just like some garbage high-end speakers lately. No correlation between time-alignment and tonal balance.

The 2 pairs of speakers I listen to are smooth as butter and are NOT time co-incident and they do not sound bright, because that's how I designed them. 

Best,


E

phd

post pics here in Virtual Systems.  Happy Listening!

Men's hearing loss is our natural evolution meant to prevent us from killing women as we age.  IMHO. It doesn't decline fast enough, which is why we die sooner.  Again, IMHO.  

Soix, funny stuff! I may find my wife's voice bright even though I have age appropriate male hearing loss in the upper most frequencies.