It's often a complaint about loudspeakers that this brand or that model is too bright.
I haven't found any that I have found to be unacceptably bright (maybe it's my hearing) so I'm interested in the opinions of pfmers on this matter.
I'd like to go and listen to some "bright" speakers to get some perspective.
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!
