OMG, just removed my speaker grills and the sound just opened up to a new level!

Congratulations on your daring move! ;)

Yes, this is basic, one of the simplest and effective ways to improve speaker performance. I remove absolutely every speaker grill possible. Consider a speaker playing through a grill to be akin to firing a tomato at a strainer - it's a mess. Not much good comes from shoving a mesh/grill in front of drivers, despite the hoopla over Paradigm's grills on their new line. Sure, it has a more diffuse sound - because they're blocking half of it!  :(

Magnepans - all panels with fixed grills - suffer significant degradation of sound quality, too. I have the Kingsound King III electrostatic speakers, and the difference between grills on/off is striking, quite evident. 

I'm not as  impressed by speaker companies that put fixed grills on drivers. Wretched mistake, imo. At this point I don't know that I would own such a speaker (Aside from perhaps HT use, like the small, wall Maggies I use because they are inexpensive and get the job done).  :) 

There is one thing that can be beneficial about a grill; it can help tame a wickedly strident tweeter. 

Have your wife blindfold you , and see if you can really hear a difference. Do it 20 times , see how many times you get it right .

Amazing how after decades in audio still there are new discoveries to be made.

I didn’t think focal made removable grills over their tweeters? That the grills effect the sound of the lower fq’s makes me think they would be good sweater fabric.

toddnkaya
Any decent wife or girlfriend would never be honest enough to allow myself to be fooled into believing they’re actually placing the grills back on when doing this experiment while blindfolded.