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system sounds 'bright'

I agree with this possibility.

The S5e is pretty flat in the treble and doesn't exhibit any nasty resonances in the upper-mid or lower treble:

S5efig8.jpg



Another possibility comes from the fact that the the impedance is quite high at 3kHz and shoots again above 10k:

S5EFIG1.jpg


If your amplifier has a high output impedance it may be reacting to the load and the combined response will peak where your ear is most sensitive.

R
Looking at the impedance and phase angles above I would try a more powerful amplifier as the Avondale amps may not be able to cope with this speaker. Don't misunderstand me the Avondale amps are fine and I actually had my NAP 135s upgraded to stage 3 for a big improvement however they couldn't really cope with my loudspeakers.

The ear is most sensitive in the treble range so any distortion here will definitely be noticed. Two things spring to mind:-
a) the impedance over this range is 20+ Ohms and that means for a given output power the voltage swing will be much larger over this region
b) the phase angle over most of this region is 20 - 50 degrees and that means a lot of power is wasted as heat in the output transistors rather than driving the speaker and in the worse case only perhaps around 17% of the generated power produces sound from the speakers.

I don't know what type of music is played nor at what volume but my thinking is that with dynamic music the transients may exceed the average voltage going to the speakers by a 100 or more times and these short lived transients may drive the amp into clipping in the treble region thus generating odd harmonics at higher frequencies. This behaviour is known to grate and be shrill.

So its worth trying to borrow a powerful amplifier and give it a whirl.

Cheers,

DV
 
Well I swapped over to a simple spare passive pre that I used with my old leak stereo 20 with a Alps 10k volume pot and it seems the brightness has dissipated somewhat?
I wonder if the B4 can be altered internally,maybe swapping some caps around that may alleviate the brightness??
Thanks
 


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