Are those McIntosh speakers with the gazillion midrange drivers?
Ye gads. I high end store used to sell an expensive iteration of those years ago and they were consistently the most awful sounding speakers in the store. Quality-wise, they reminded me of a big version of a cheap boom box midrange...but just tons of them sending a wall of that bland, grey, low quality tone at me.
Not long ago I was in a high end store that had one of the newer versions of the McIntosh speakers - yet again with the multiple mid drivers. I threw on some of my CDs and...there it was. Exactly that awful presentation as I remembered it from years before. Completely devoid of anything resembling organic, believable or high quality tone. Just "sound" and lots of it. (Again, I have no idea of the quality of drivers they use, but the sonic impression to me is that of taking the cheapest drivers from a boombox or cheap sub-sat speaker, placing a lot of them in a box, and just getting a big sonic presentation of low quality sound).