Reynaud Bliss Jubile vs Cantabile Jubile

@analogj 

The Eden's are a stand mount speaker with the tweeter below the bass driver and the Cantabile is a floor stander with the tweeter at the top of the cabinet.  How have you set up the Reynaud's in relation to the set up of the Eden's in relation to positioning in the room and to your listening position?  Also you need to take into account your seating height difference for the two speakers as it will be vastly different.  You may need to adjust the rake angle of the Reyanud's either forward or backwards to get you in line with the driver positioning difference.  If you have an adjustable height office chair somewhere in the house try it to determine the correct seating height.  

They're about the same place as the Edens. The Edens, however, were designed with the tweeter below and to the right of the woofer. With the Cantibile Jubile, the tweeter is pretty much on line with my ears. My sitting is done on the couch. Not much I can do about that. If I sit up a bit or even stand, the occasional shouty quality is not as pronounced. Toeing out the speakers lessens it a bit as well (but not completely). But there is also a lack of ease in the top end when pushed compared to the midrange on down which has QUITE an ease to it. I can hear both the relaxed qualities of certain music from the next room, as well as when the reproduction gets relatively up tight up top. I'm wondering if further breaking in will result in the top end getting more relaxed. With certain types of music, these speakers can be remarkable.

But back to the shouty quality, I've noticed that if a vocalist sings a short 'a' (as in "had") or long 'e' (as in "needy"), which results in a reedy quality to the human voice (Anyone should be able to reproduce this), that reedy quality exacerbates the shouty quality, like the particular overtone(s) jump out when that word is sung, and it can be a bit unpleasant.

More break-in could certainly help but I have never noticed this with any Reynaud speaker utilizing their dome tweeters.  Simple thing to try it to raise the spikes on the fronts and then the backs of the speaker and see if a slight tilt up or down might eliminate what you're hearing as a "shouty" quality.  You are used to having the tweeter below your ears so in effect tilting the speaker so that they are either below or above might help and worth a try.  Other obvious thing is to try sitting on a pillow and see what effect that has by raising you up.  Don't know how far you had the Eden's from the back wall but with the Cantabile's front port you could try backing them up a little at a time and see what effect changing the angle this way has. 

I can try altering that a bit. I can tell you that the hardness when the music in the upper frequencies is dense can be heard from the other room. There's a difference between what's happening from the midrange on down, which is quite sweet.

Funny that I was talking about these speakers in the Steve Hoffman Hardware Forum. I never used the term 'shouty' there, but someone volunteered that they had a pair of Silver Bliss in their house. He tried them in their bedroom and he used the term "shouty". It was unpleasant. They tried them in their large living room and they didn't exhibit that shoutiness. But they couldn't deliver the low end he was looking for, so he ended up selling them. Different tweeter, of course. But that did prompt me to look further at placement.

So in an update, I'm finding that the brightness, the exaggeration of certain upper frequencies can be lessened by other toeing the speakers significantly outward, or listening above the tweeter horizontal axis. As I listen in sort of a fixed position on a couch, my ear line is sort of on the line of the tweeters, therefore what I'll need to do is try to tilt the speaker cabinets forward so I'll be listening above their vertical dispersion. I was leaning back in on the sofa and noticed that the top end of a saxophone was bright, and pushed forward so that the instrument was coming pretty much directly out of the tweeter. When I sat up and above the tweeter, the sax pushed back and became more coherent with the rest of the soundstage, (And when I leaned back, lowering the level of my ears, the sax once again came more directly out of the speaker.).

Another thing about the speaker's performance is that I'm noticing that with simpler material, this speaker is quite lovely to listen to. The speakers sound natural and both relaxed yet quick, as is live music. But when the music gets dense, such as massed brass, massed voices, or massed strings, the upper end soundstage gets cluttered and confused. The speaker loses some of its ability to resolve with clarity and ease in the upper end. I'm still trying to figure out why that is happening and what to do about it.

The thing is, there are many things that this speaker does truly well, and with simpler music, it really plays musically. But then a denser passage will come along and it reminds me that I'm listening through speakers, these speakers.