New Fritz Carbon 7 bookshelf speakers review!

@stuartk  

FWIW, I found the Carbon 7’s surprisingly bright, based upon what I’d encountered in reviews.

If memory serves, you’ve had brightness issues in your listening area for many different products and it’s largely the fault of your room. 

I’ve tried Fritz against many other speakers. It is NOT a bright speaker. I’ve tried it not only in my treated listening room and in my untreated basement -- which is neither bright nor dull. 

Speakers plus rooms make brightness. If your room is bright, don’t blame the speaker. It’s soft dome tweeter, after all.

Oh, and people bring panels to shows for audio because they don't know what they're going to get and at least need to deal with unexpected issues -- this is NO proof that the speakers are bright to begin with.

@hilde45 

I've had rather dull sound, bright sound and at present, pretty evenly balanced sound in my room, depending upon speakers and electronics. 

@stuartk Ok. 

I stand by my own experience that I have never heard the Carbon 7 speakers sound anything but lovely, detailed, and smooth on the top end. Never harsh. Ever. They do not have the Be tweeters of Fritz's Carreras. To confuse the two speakers is to do Fritz an injustice. 

"@stuartk FWIW, I found the Carbon 7’s surprisingly bright, based upon what I’d encountered in reviews. Fritz suggested I play them at length, at loud volume, face to face but that wasn’t practical in my case, so I returned them. I will say, he’s a great guy."

Hmm, I’ve used those same drivers in some custom speakers I’ve built and with these same brand drivers in particular never found them to be bright and quite weighty and musical, even using a simple 2-way crossover.  I had done nothing overly exhaustive or proven or tediously evolved like Fritz has developed and accomplished with his crossover fine tuning.  Nothing bright with these drivers, fwiw. One of the more musical and warm bodied pairings I’ve ever tried in fact.  

Possible key indicators of something else going on with your room, setup, source, amplifier, cables being used, or possibly a bad synergy going on there. 

@stuark what amplifier and cables are you using these days that you tested the Fritz speakers with? Were the brand-spanken-new from Fritz or used demos?

-I ask because if you did not give the crossovers, drivers, all of it time to settle in, there is no value in stating they were bright if recommended procedures were not followed, just sayin’.  New speaker drivers need time to loosen up, stiff new. 

+1 @decooney 

@stuartk Have you measured your room, acoustically? If so, share the graphs, especially the impulse graph.