Sensitive ears to speakers. Help!!!

You need to describe your system as well as lay out,carpet, couches ,windows and size of your room .If one has highly reflective acoustics, bright speakers and a bright sounding cd player the combination will be most undesireable .How does your system sound to others? How loud do you play your system ? A smoother sounding amp, cd player and a tube pre amp will often tame bright highs as will the proper cables and sound treatment.

You have what is commonly known as Theil's syndrome. Take two vandersteens and call me in the morning (if you get up by then).

thiel - new browser sw isn't working so well.

Regarding tweeters, I feel like I'm hearing a dome attached to a coil, when I hear metal dome tweeters, even the best ones (and especially the Focal ones). However, with the best soft domes, if you can ever hear a characteristic, it just seems to be from the coil itself. In other words, the sound seems to come from a light weight coil and its ring shaped former, and the soft dome out in front literally has NO character at all. Other types have this type of characterless sound, like ribbons, but ribbons don't dynamically come to life like the best soft domes. I suggest you try a speaker that uses the Scanspeak Revelator tweeter, and you'll hear what I'm talking about. They're used in models from Nova Audio, PBN Montana, and the top of the line Sonus Faber Amati Homage...besides many others. Dynaudio also makes very good soft domes. One of my own speaker systems is an excellent model from Shayne Tenace at Paragon Acoustics, called the Radiant. The 3/4 inch Dynaudio tweeter in this speaker (and also in the larger hourglass-shaped Regent) is perhaps the best dome of that size in the world, with the Scanspeak model this size being a close second (used in most of the ProAc line).

Yep Jel, once upon a time I went down the same road you're on. My rig sounded impressive and amazing but it was way analytical. I could hear all the details, but musical coherence was lacking. Everytime a new instrument re-entered the mix I'd go crazy evaluating its sound trying to decide if it sounded 'right' or not. It's probably a common high end phenomenon. In my case I chalked it up to the character of the speakers and the front end source. Once I found my way out, what a revelation! Expressiveness is at the top of my desireable trait list now. But I'd never have gotten to this point without getting lost on the analytical side for many years. So there's still hope for you, haha. Being able to relax and enjoy is where it's at for me.