Why are these speakers so bright but others not?

I did play with speaker and seating placement somewhat, but I was just surprised how not good I found the Revel and 3.6R's in my room. Not that they aren't excellent speakers - the clarity and lack of distortian in Revel's midrange came through unhampered as did the sense of space with the Maggies (although obviously constrained in my room and placement).

The PSBs and the Martin Logan's ended up being located very close to the same location which was interesting because they are so different a design. My PSBs (original golds) are front ported and the MLs have the panel and on of it's woofs rear firing. I think the MLs also did well in my room because of the narrow dispersion (i.e. mitigating brightness of untreated room). I thought I could place the Revel's in a fairly similar location to the PSBs, but I could't get enough bass without putting them pretty close to the front wall. I do have lumpy response in my room below 60Hz.

I originally built my system around the PSBs way back when, hence the amp, but I fell in love with vocals and instruments on the MLs despite some of the other tradeoffs (bass in my room, some dynamics). Midrange is so much cleaner and so much more detailed.

Rob: Which Auralex product did you buy for treatment in which areas? What was the price? I know I need to do something. I only have these blackout blinds on one window (fortunately, the one where first reflection point would be) and I can tell a difference with that shade down and only listen with that shade down, but it's no doubt pretty wimpy compared to real acoustic treatment. This is a new room/house for me and I know I have a long way to go down this path for sure.

John: the CD player and the speakers are the updates so far to my 10yr old system. Amp, preamp, and phono would be next. I figured speaker upgrade followed by amp to make sure I have a synergistic match there (OCM was originally bought to go with the PSBs) (I guess this is a bit of a what-order-do-I-upgrade-my-components thread). I definitely wouldn't expect the AI to be causing the brightness (resolution loss is a concern too), but more immediately have been wondering about the amp (have heard in some cases OCM is good bass amp but rough on top end, but I have nothing to compare with at the moment), hence my plans to at least swap to try it out.

Where do I pick up 1-3 ohm attenuators? I'm new to Maggies. I also forgot to mention that to audition the Maggies, I had to borrow some Monster M2.2 speaker cable with bananas since my sigma retro gold has spades and I didn't have spade/banana adapters on hand to audition that way. maybe that was part of the problem there, but I should be able to do a little bit more of an apples to apples comparison with bananas on sigma soon.

I actually had recently toyed with the idea of Vandy 3s (10 years ago, I wish I had gone that route rather than the PSBs). To be frank, I had very good deals on the MLs and Maggies - too good to pass up so it's definitely been worth my trouble to go this route.

John, thanks for the helpful info. I picked up some Xterminators at work and biwired using the Sigma Retro Gold. I TAKE BACK WHAT I SAID ABOUT THE BRIGHTNESS! Even without playing around with placement, they sound good. I think it was due to my not making sure all the bananas were screwed in tight with those little hex screws where the bananas go in (Doh! Maggie rookie move on my part. Never had to futz with bananas much before). Mid bass seems much more prominent than with the Odysseys. A bit of sibilance still, but the Xterminator connectors are undoubtedly a compromised connection in comparison to hardwired and my room is not treated. I can see that these would likely be more finicky about room the placement than the MLs appear to be (although I haven't found optimal positions for either) and in their current placement, they sound constrained, like they're begging for more room to breath.

Now for another question: I get plenty of volume out of my CD player connected through AUX port on the AI Mod 3 (AUX port avoids the resistor in the signal path on the CD port), but definitely seemed to hit the ceiling with my DVD player connected to the DAT port. I'm not sure if this is a I-don't-have-enough-power-for-the-Maggies issue (my OCM supposedly is 225W at 8 and almost double that I believe at 4 ohms) or it's some funky gain issue with the DVD player and the preamp. My Arcam puts out a higher than average 2.3V or so.

John, thanks for the helpful info. I picked up some Xterminators at work and biwired using the Sigma Retro Gold. I TAKE BACK WHAT I SAID ABOUT THE BRIGHTNESS! Even without playing around with placement, they sound good. I think it was due to my not making sure all the bananas were screwed in tight with those little hex screws where the bananas go in (Doh! Maggie rookie move on my part. Never had to futz with bananas much before). Mid bass seems much more prominent than with the Odysseys. A bit of sibilance still, but the Xterminator connectors are undoubtedly a compromised connection in comparison to hardwired and my room is not treated. I can see that these would likely be more finicky about room the placement than the MLs appear to be (although I haven't found optimal positions for either) and in their current placement, they sound constrained, like they're begging for more room to breath.

Now for another question: I get plenty of volume out of my CD player connected through AUX port on the AI Mod 3 (AUX port avoids the resistor in the signal path on the CD port), but definitely seemed to hit the ceiling with my DVD player connected to the DAT port. I'm not sure if this is a I-don't-have-enough-power-for-the-Maggies issue (my OCM supposedly is 225W at 8 and almost double that I believe at 4 ohms) or it's some funky gain issue with the DVD player and the preamp. My Arcam puts out a higher than average 2.3V or so.