An inexpensive SPL meter and a Test CD or Test LP with Individual Freqency Bands will reveal the answer.
It is possible you are hearing the ’lack of compression’ rather than too bright. Or, they are too bright.
The meter is a great tool to try adjusting speaker location and toe-in.
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I just had a related experience:
I had just used a new sound meter and GRP/Carver Test CD with 29 specific frequency bands to adjust my mid horn and tweeter horn’s individual L-Pads (simply more or less attenuation of mid to woofer and then tweet to mid, some minor interaction).
3 days ago, a friend/neighbor/music producer came over for some good beer and music.
I had kept my tweeter’s l-pads too low, he heard that readily, I adjusted them, speck by speck, he listened, then the slight compression he heard was gone, he pronounced the sound, imaging, depth excellent, and suspected when I checked the next day with the sound meter that I would find we raised the tweeters 2db.
sure enough, I simply perfected the Left tweeter’s L pad a speck to match the right one with specific frequency bands from the GRP/Carver Test CD.
Listening a great deal the next day, I realized my mistake, and it’s more than subtle effect.
While the meter was showing the level of the 16k band which I surprisingly heard, I thought, if I, 73 year old ears, can hear 16k, then it must be too high for Donna and younger ears. So, I lowered the L-Pad to reduce the tweeters (by about 2db is turned out).
What I didn’t think about, didn’t realize: the SPL I was hearing did not correlate to the SPL of the Meter. I heard 16k surprisingly well, but I think it is fair to say not as well as the meter.
Thinking/Listening the next day, duh, I wasn’t just erroneously avoiding ’too much tweeter’, I was causing some compression, because it reduced both the volume and time decay of the overtones of the upper mids.
The Eurythmics, Andreas Vollenwider, Blue Nile are full of splendid highs and the overtones of lower notes I had cut off.
What a gift to have my friends ears.
An inexpensive SPL meter and test CD with specific frequency bands turns out to be a great tool in the right hands/ears. They have tripod mounts, set at ear level listening position, go band by band, make notes, see what you are getting, even if you don’t have the ability to adjust levels, you will know ’too bright’, oh, not too bright, the others were too dull and I didn’t know it. Also a good tool to help refine speaker location and toe-in
Meter does not have to be perfectly calibrated, just good enough to indicate any band’s SPL relative to the adjacent bands
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$19. delivered
This CD has content, phase, pink noise, sweeps, and most helpful for info: 29 specific frequency bands 25 hz to 20k, each 1 minute long, longer than needed, but not annoyingly short.
