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

@aewarren I remember SpeakerLab. And I remember as a teen the pair of DAS6 that me and a friend moved out of my pops shop and back to the apt to set up in my room. He was not happy at first but never took them back or really said much about them. I had those for quite some time, pretty decent speaker for $0!

As for the original question, Klipsch have always been bright and meh to my ears for the most part. Various JBL designs, Meridian, Martin Logan (1998, 20005-2010), were all on the brighter side of things and just didn’t do it for me.

I’ve managed to get a hold of a pair of speakers that I can’t describe as being dull, bright, boring, unexciting, lethargic, or simply lacking, to my ears. I’m mulling over inserting a tube based pre-amp into the signal chain, but that’s just to see if I like that sound in my setup. Aside from that, I enjoy spending my spare time finding new music to listen to and not obsessing over "am I hearing enough detail" "is the sound edgy",etc.

I’m near Santa Clara CA. I need to check out a retailer and hear some stuff. Any recommendations?

I would have to say B&W. I went and auditioned the CDM1NT back in the day and thought they were tremendous! I bought them on the spot. However after extended periods of listening my ears would ring (yes I must confess I do like to listen at louder levels). When a fellow enthusiast directed me to Dynaudio and I listened (and sold the B&W's for the Danes) it was only then I realized the B&W's were on the bright side in comparison to Dynaudio. This was 20 years ago mind you...

I had to sell off all my gear during my divorce and have been out of the game for 20 years. But at least now getting back in I knew which speakers to buy. So I went with Dynaudio Excite. Weirdly I was questioning everything I remembered as I found the Excites to be a bit on the bright side. Still had that tremendous soundstage and detail that I remember with the Audience line, but now with a bit of harshness...Ended up selling the Excites for Evoke and I'm back in Nirvana :)

@kenjit 

If self-parody were an art form, your work would be in high demand.

First off, I tend to gravitate towards speakers with an emphasized top end, but end up regretting it after sustained listening after higher volumes. - above 70 dB. The older Boston Acoustics - A100, A150 - could fatigue my ears in a second if cranked up. Lots of sizzle. The KEF LS50’s will also attack you if you point them directly at you; I hear the Meta’s aren’t so spikey. I thought any of the Elac bookshelves I listened to were smooth in their top end and never caused fatigue, but I never ended up keeping them around for long. Had some older Polk Audio ones which with also smooth but too prominent in the midrange for my tastes. Had a vintage McIntosh SS amp (and a Parasound A23+) which reined back the spikier ones.

I just experienced turning wonderfully balanced truly involving speakers into god awful shriekers.

Against my instincts, but to try what many strongly advised, I removed my two L-Pads (Brilliance and Presence) from each side.

The horn tweeters dominated to a horrible degree. These original Electro-voice drivers/systems were designed with the AT37 12 db L-Pads as an important part of the system.

’Building-Block’ Kits

https://products.electrovoice.com/binary/BB1,2,3,4,5%20EDS.pdf

Mine were designed as 3 way originally, within a Fisher President II console. Middle of the AT37 was ’standard’, range up to +6db for soft/dead rooms; range down to -6db for live/hard rooms.