I want new speakers, mine are too bright

[Jbucla2005]

This is my first post here. I am very happy with this system (for headphones - DT-880's,) however the speakers are starting to annoy me, while they are very detailed and lively they seem a bit forward and get tiring to my ears after a while in my setup. I really think I should have kept my last pair of speakers, Vandersteen 1C's. Now I'm seriously considering saving up for them again. This is a pic of my rig.

The speakers are Omega Minuets that have modified by rewiring with thick solid-wire copper wiring inside, and the speaker wire is directly wired to the speakers. The source is 1212M running into the Luxman tube amp via silver interconnects.

[Yikes]

Let me get this straight; you went from a well-designed high quality Vandersteen to what I can only refer to as a poorly designed piece of audiophilia voo doo. The speaker as its designed would exhibit Extremely poor high frequency dispersion. Normally I?d say change the amount of toe in with such a speaker, but based upon your photo you don?t toe them in. Stranger and stranger.

If you were looking for speakers that would offer a better overall balance, I?d look for a speaker that has a tweeter and at least one woofer, and most importantly a crossover. I?m particularly fond of the new Dali speakers. The Dali Ikon series offers tremendous price/performance ratio. They are well-designed speakers. They use a ribbon super tweeter, but don?t worry. They are not bright. They have the sweetest top end of any speaker in the price range.

Oh.. by the way. I have nothing to do with Dali. It?s just that I am impressed by the modestly priced Ikon series.

Sorry for knocking the design of your speakers, but I calls them as I see them.

[Jbucla2005]

Yes, it was a bad idea, I never should have sold the Vandersteens.

[Jbucla2005]

Let me get this straight; you went from a well-designed high quality Vandersteen to what I can only refer to as a poorly designed piece of audiophilia voo doo. The speaker as its designed would exhibit Extremely poor high frequency dispersion. Normally I?d say change the amount of toe in with such a speaker, but based upon your photo

you don?t toe them in. Stranger and stranger.

What exactly is poor high frequency dispersion? About toe-in, I do actually toe them in a bit.

[Yikes]

Sorry I was not purposely ignoring your query.

Dispersion ?to cause to become spread widely?

It?s how the sound comes out of and spreads into a room. Modern speakers that almost all use a small tweeter tend to have very wide dispersion. Speakers with wide dispersion tend to image better.

Tweeters (Drivers that reproduce high frequencies) are usually small. The reason is actually twofold: 1) A small driver has much better dispersion* and 2) A small driver can be made much lighter (Less Mass) being lighter it takes much less energy to start and stop the drivers motion. With less mass the driver is faster and can follow the input signal more closely i.e. Less Distortion.

Better dispersion? When the wavelength of the sound being reproduced becomes shorter than the diameter of the driving surface the waveform that is produced begins to beam. The waveform no longer spreads out. This adversely affects imaging. It will also mean that if the listener is off axis they will not hear the high frequencies that are beaming.

20 Hertz wavelength is 56 Feet

100 Hertz wavelength is 11 Feet

1000 Hertz wavelength is 13.5 inches

10000 Hertz wavelength is 1.35 inches

So a single driver system is bad engineering for two reasons:

The driver is (by comparison) very massive and therefore slower and has much greater high frequency Distortion (being that it can?t accurately follow the input signal).

And The Diver has very poor high frequency dispersion.

[Yikes]

Bright can be caused by two things:

Too much High Frequency energy

And (Much more common) High Frequency distortion.

The Toe In of your speakers won?t help the 2nd but with the design of your speakers toe in can have a dramatic affect on the amount of high frequency energy that you hear at your listening position.

[LFF]

Give some JBL4311's a listen. You may like them.

[Jbucla2005]

Well, as may already know from my other post... I re-bought the Vandy 1c's, which have been supposedly improved a lot over the past 8+ years since I bought my first pair, which does appear to be true. Anyway the Vandies are wonderful and definately on the darker side but still very detailed, a really great match with my amp, I am very happy and I now understand why the full-range driver market is a small one. I actually have a pair of Omega Mini-Me's in my bedroom which I prefer to the Minuets and I think they make a great alternative listen that is very sweet. As Louis states on his website they are harmonically pure sounding due to the lack of a crossover. But that can't compare to the Vandies in terms of range, dynamics, and punch. They are a very nice small speaker though for my bedroom setup.

[Jbucla2005]

new vandies sound great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

mini-me's in my bedroom with an old yamaha minisystem (temporary amp!)