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Which speakers are the brightest?

There was a research letter in The Lancet in the late 90s that showed that some persons can hear all the way up to 26kHz. I sent John Atkinson of Stereophile a copy. I wonder if I can dig that up somewhere? Anyway, oil-can resonance for aluminium tweeters is usually around 20 - 25KHz so maybe that's why some people find these tweeters objectionable? Dunno.
 
I find brightness volume dependant, at the sort of levels I listen at then nothing is terribly bright.

I once owned some Neats that I thought sounded wonderful, when I sold them I delivered them to the new owner who promptly hooked them up to an awful Krell thingy and cranked up some metal, they were painful to say the least.
 
A lot depends on the room. I imagine many speakers that sound over-bright in a sparsely furnished room would sound fine in a more heavily furnished one. Similarly a speaker that sounds fine in the former might sound dull in the latter.
 
I can understand how some systems can come over as bright, but can often measure quite well. I was recently in a bar with a live band with quite a lot of HF energy (cymbals etc) and it made me realise just how hard that probably is to replay in a living room.

From my experience, rooms play havoc with speakers' frequency response and an issue with the top end is very often a manifestation of a problems a lot lower down in the frequency range.
 
Yes, I think that is true and related to the way different frequency ranges are propagated within a room.

Zu speakers can come over as pretty 'fierce' in the top end - if that helps the OP.
 
When playing a frequency sweep from 10Hz to 20KHz, I noticed that I cannot hear frequency around 16KHz while somewhere 17KHz onwards becomes audible again until some where near 18KHz to 19KHz where it becomes too soft to hear.

Maybe there are others like me that can't hear certain high frequencies.

I'm like you on this....I played the Alan Parsons HiFi setup recordings (which I recommend) and it has sweeps and tones all the way from 20Hz to 20Khz and I can't hear anything above 14Khz although it feels like something is there when I approach the tweeters. I only feel rumble below 40Hz.

I once blew (actually several times) my tweeters in Linn Kans and replaced these with Hiquaphone IIs, thought it would be an upgrade but they sounded a bit too bright for my liking....maybe the B110s were too old and not keeping up with the new tweeters. I wished I had bought the cheaper ones Oskar recommended the dpl-1s (I maybe wrong here, just typing from memory over 5 years ago). Edit: I'm 53.
 
I'm like you on this....I played the Alan Parsons HiFi setup recordings (which I recommend) and it has sweeps and tones all the way from 20Hz to 20Khz and I can't hear anything above 14Khz although it feels like something is there when I approach the tweeters. I only feel rumble below 40Hz.

It could be that what you hear when you are close to the tweeter is actually intermodulation products that reflect below 14 kHz.
 
Room , treatments, distance , furnishings all affect brightness perception (2-5khz range) as does the level you play at (fletcher munson)
Worst speakers I ever had re harshness were Modern Klipsches RF83 ... that horn had me reaching for earmuffs
Even if your hearing only goes to , lets say , 12k ..if you low pass a set of speakers , even with a 48db/octave filter above that , the sound loses air and some detail/sparkle..
 
They are voiced to sit on the floor and near a wall. Put that piezo tweeter at ear level and lose the corner gain and of course they are then bright
 
Maybe Klipsch speakers are tested with a room full of people. It's a bit like setting up the pa when I was in a band.

Before the people come in it sounds bright and lively. With the audience in place it sounds much less so.

Yesterday I heard some budget Dali speakers in Mr Richers shop. Driven by some midi system thingy they sounded a little thin but the the upper part of the f spectrum was interesting to hear, nicely detailed.

I'm now forever wondering what they'd sound like with a bit more muscle driving them, like my Supernait 2. Or is that a a silly idea?

My next step: I'll try a f based hearing test!
 
I'm often guilty of making this accusation so I guess I should comment...

My mental image of a flat natural and neutral balance is something like a Quad ESL (either 57 or 63), a BBC speaker like a Spendor BC1, Rogers 3/6 etc, a well setup pair of vintage Tannoys etc. These can sound like a very good pair of headphones to me, e.g. not that different balance-wise from my Sennheiser HD-600s. To my ears/preferences a whole world apart from many modern metal dome-tweetered small bass-mid stand-mounts, slim floor standers or whatever. I really struggle to think of any speakers with metal dome tweeters I like to be honest. The notable exception being Yamaha NS1000, but even then I'd turn them down a bit with the L-pad! In some ways I'm being unfair as so often the people deming such kit are doing so at levels I don't consider small-driver compact speakers can reach without my hearing very obvious distortion. I'm of the mindset that if you want over 90db peak levels you need a bloody big speaker with a 12" or 15" bass driver, otherwise the top and mid start to get louder than the bass.

To put it another way to my mind most rhythm-bassed music, be it rock, pop, jazz or whatever should mainly be pushed along by the bass and kick-drum, if the balance becomes so tilted, as to my ears it often does, that it ends up being dragged along by the hi-hats or cymbals something has gone very wrong with the system balance.

I think this is an inadvertent yet inevitable byproduct of the whole subjectivist sales process that came along with Linn/Naim etc in the late '70s. People comparing a whole string of A vs B dems often tend to go for the one they suspect has more "detail" (brightness) and the "fastest tightest most 'tuneful' bass" (leanness, dryness, less real bass, more mid-bass) and do so recursively over a period of years and years end up in an 'reductio ad absurdum' cul-de-sac of wrongness. I remain a big fan of the early 'flat-earth' kit; the LP12 when it had a nice warm spring in its step, chrome bumper Naim amps and Linn speakers back when they were big, warm, fun and bouncy. It all started out right, but over the years I noticed everything becoming thinner, more bleached, more forward, drier and just wrong to my ears. I jumped ship and went back to what for me is a far more natural and more real tonality and presentation. I'm currently pretty much in a 60s-70s recording studio scenario, and that is the right place for me, though I'd be just as happy with Quads.

PS Given I own the site I'm very reluctant to name the stuff I really don't like, there is a fair bit of it but I've never wanted to be a reviewer and as a publisher it probably isn't professional to dig myself in too far! As such I have neutered this somewhat!

'...big, warm, fun and bouncy.'
Reminds me of something, but I can't quite remember what...
 
They are voiced to sit on the floor and near a wall. Put that piezo tweeter at ear level and lose the corner gain and of course they are then bright

What piezo tweeter? Klipsch used the EV T35 horn tweeter for decades, then at some point replaced them with a lower cost dynamic equivalent (I dunno if The T35 became unavailable, or just became too expensive...).
 
What piezo tweeter? Klipsch used the EV T35 horn tweeter for decades, then at some point replaced them with a lower cost dynamic equivalent (I dunno if The T35 became unavailable, or just became too expensive...).

The K77 (EV T35 variant) is still used in all the Heritage line and is a proper horn tweeter. It is not a bad tweeter IMO, though not that extended (usually out of the game around 18kHz). Much of the problem is people not understanding where a Heresy should be placed - it is designed to sit flat on the floor and either against a rear wall or in a corner, as such it's tweeter is set at the crossover higher than the mid, which is higher than the bass. The balance is decent enough when used as intended, though beng very efficient they will show up any grain or hash in non-class A solid state. Far better with tube amps of their era.
 
Celestion SL6s had metal domed tweeters & were hardly bright, My current German-made Quadrals have ribbon tweeters that supposedly extend into Exahertz region that are detailed without being bright (unless the music is).
I maintain it's not the tech or the country of origin but the implementation.
 


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