New speakers and excessive midrange

Thanks, Albert. He said he put about 80 hrs. using a Test CD. BTW - the Dared's and the Linn CD player are new/almost new - do they also have a break-in period?

In my experience all new pieces have a break in period. The CD should be less drastic than the speakers but I cannot know for certain as I have not owned that player.

My guess is your speakers will require at least 300 hours. Again, the manufacturer may have data based on tests that would allow you to keep track of hours and watch the progress unfold.

I am currently at 608 hours on my Dali's and the last 65 hours have moved my speakers so drastically that everyone in my group is commenting. I hope yours don't require that long, but don't give up on them until your sure they have had a fair chance.

This could be a break in issue, but there may be other things involved;

First, these are bookshelf speakers so they will be limited in bass response.
Their web-site rates these speakers' response as 50Hz to 20Khz, but they
don't give any information beyond that, so there's no way to know how linear
is the response bewteen those frequencies. This leads me to suspect some
roll-off at the extremes, especially in the bass, which is already limited.

You could also be accurately sensing something in the room. Most rooms roll
off the highs and have big peaks and/or valleys between 35Hz and 120Hz.
You can go to several sites on the web, load in your room dimensions and get
some idea about the problems in your room. It also has something to do
with speaker placement, room treatment, drapes, carpet, hardwood floors,
etc. An absorbant room can roll of your highs and certain room dimensions
make it hard for bass to resolve itself. If your previous system bumped up
the highs and lows it may have covered this problem. This would also
account for the new system sounding mid-range heavy.

These speakers have limited bass response, may have a roll off in the high
end, and/or your room may be rolling off the high end and/or your room may
have significant suck outs between 50hz and 120 hz, which would rob your
speakers of their already limited low end.

First things first -- give your new speakers a chance to break in.

What do you mean new / like new ? If they're less than 50 hours of playing time then some more (100 hrs) breaking time is needed and did you change stock tubes to NOS ? They will made a huge different. Specially in the Dared SL-2000A.

I had to wait forever for the break in of my Aha! Njoe Tjoeb CD player and Von Schweikert speakers. about 300 hours now and I think they have finally settled in. I wouldn't change anything until you have passed the burn-in period.