What causes listener fatique? cure?

i've found that almost anything in a system can cause listener fatigue. in my current setup, it took a tradeout of speaker cables to remove the last vestige of harshness that kept me from hours' long listening pleasure. .....kelly

I have to agree with Trelja on this one. Historically, metallic type tweeters have been prone to razor sharp detail,but also to a substantial amount of brightness. At first you say "I've uncovered a wealth of new detail", but then the reality that your not enjoying yourself as much sets in. Metal drivers seem to do it in every application I have heard. Some examples include, Dick Sequerra" ribbon tweeters, Apogee, ATC, Platinum and most Infinity designs. There are always exceptions, but brightness in tweeters is generally the worst offender in listener fatigue.

my curent speakers - meret re's - use focal's titanium inwerted-dome tweeters. no listener-fatigue due to harsh treble here. only cd gave me this - and, i had it w/the soft-dome thiel 3.5's that were in my main rig before the merets. turntable & tuna were always yust fine. a melos toobed preamp cured the harshness from the cd, btw. before that, i used a z-man ase toobed buffer-stage for my digital, w/solid-state preamps. don't need it anymore, w/the melos. the tuna & 'table also sound great w/the melos toobed pre! ;~)

doug

ps - there's currrently a pair of merets f/s on a-gon for $800 - hard to touch the sound-quality for anything close to that price, imho...

I guess we all have different interpretations on things. I am glad you like the Focal Ti tweeters, Sedond. While I simply love the woofers/midwoofers/midranges from Focal, I absolutely abhor their tweeters. Be they Ti, TiO2, or Kevlar. The Ti in particular are the worst sounding tweeters I have ever come across. Perhaps in your speaker, the designer was able to make them listenable ala the crossover design or whatever. I have not encountered any listening fatigue in drivers operating above their ideal frequency range OTHER than metal coned drivers. The metal drivers are quite succeptible to audible, irritating ringing.

As mentioned above, I agree that there are many different things that can cause listener fatigue, and I've found it's usually electronics, wires etc. too. John_1 has a good list, But one more: as the tubes in my pre-amp reach the end of their useful life, they produce brighter, harder upper mids and low treble that give me headaches. Of course putting in new tubes takes care of the problem-- it took me awhile to figure this out though. Non-fatiguing speakers between $2000 & $4000?-- I'd nominate Vandersteen 3Asigs. at $3500., or std. 3As at $2800. Good Luck. Craig.