Which speakers did you find bright, fatiguing or just disappointing in some way?

@prof 
I am surprised by the Spendor D7. I have auditioned it with some really good front end electronics. They were not fatiguing at all. I would say, I auditioned them for a max of 20 mins continuous listening. But I do keep hearing that they do not sound like vintage Spendor sound. Don't know what that means though.

milpai

Understood.

I found to my utter surprise that the D7 sounded somewhat wiry, hard and forward in the high frequencies and I had to keep turning it down.Confused by this I looked up other user reports and found a number of other people felt the same, which was interesting.

Not long after I was in another audio store and sat down in front of a pair of speakers playing, not taking notice of the brand. I noticed a similar quality that I found off-putting. When I looked at the speakers closely it turned out they were Spendor A7 floor standing speakers.

I guess I just don’t get along with the New Spendor Sound of their modern floor standers.

(Which isn’t to say I’m only about cozey, comfy rolled off sound. I use Thiels and Joseph speakers at home as well as Spendors, which are very extended in the high frequencies, but they don’t cause my ears to shut down like the Spendors did).

This is not a real question. Remove it please moderators!

@mahgister   I have an answer to your question:  deficient set up.  Certainly I have heard bright speakers that I felt I could never own and enjoy, but there have been many mentioned in this thread that don't fit that camp, and I can only imagine that the weren't "cared and fed" well.

I have run speakers for the last 6 years that ride that razor's edge, and what I appreciate about them is that they reveal everything - - in the gear, in the cabling, in the mastering of the recordings, but, most importantly, in the music making.  When things aren't lined up well in my system, the result can be too much "sound" focused and not enough "music" focused.  But put in the sweat to tune the system, and I believe the reward is greater, more immersive in the emotion of the music and the thrill of the music making.  Every speaker has its "needs" to attend to, and if you don't address them (with respect to your room, other system elements, and taste), you don't realize their potential.

Fortunately, in my years of purchasing stereo equipment, I have never purchased speakers without first listening to them for an extended period of time.  Since I've been an audiophile for many decades, I can honestly say the the most fatiguing speaker that I have ever trialed were the Bose 901's.   They were "okay" for about ten minutes but became very poor to the ears after a full twenty minutes.  I ended up purchasing Quad ESL-57's after selling my ESS Translinear II's and AMT-4's.