Do You Ever Get Glare/Raspy Sound on High Pitched Female Vocal Lines?

After some critical listening on one of my other systems with KEF LS50s, I get the same thing.  After switching out different amps, DACS, cables, bypassing the preamp, changing speaker toe-in and positioning and adding some additional wall dampening, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s due to speaker brightness, period. 

It’s a known fact that Magnepans can be bright (depending on environment) and this is pointed out in the user manual.  That’s why Maggies are shipped with 1 Ohm resistors, in order to roll off some of that in the tweeter and mid panel.  After adding some Mills resistors, the glare has been greatly reduced. 

The KEF LS50s are on the bright side too, and I’m convinced that extra brightness exacerbates the glare on that system as well.  There are likely some frequency peaks in both sets of speakers and any hot vocal peaks sharing those same frequencies is the cause for the glare I’m hearing. 

I’d like to thank everyone who posted on this thread with their insights and suggestions.  It really helped me narrow it down. 

Steve 

"Glare" and "Harshness" are forms of distortion if they are not actually intended for the media.  For that matter, any change from the media is a "distortion" so it comes down to terms..., and picking your poison.

BTW, you’ve demonstrated what I’ve been saying all along..., a $3 resistor in the crossover network can do more for the sound than a $$$ set of fancy cables or changing out a piece of equipment.

Where did you place the resistors in the schematic?  Did they go before or after the filter?

If the crossover is second order or higher and you place the resistor before the filter, it will not change the impedance seen so the slopes remain similar, but attenuated.

If the resistor went after the filter (before driver), you’ve added impedance and changed the slopes slightly..

I didn’t touch the actual crossovers.  The Magnepan 3.7x (factory tweaked 3.7i) has 2 solid metal jumpers on the rear panel.  One for the quasi ribbon tweeter and one for the midrange panel.  To attenuate either one, you simply replace the jumper with a resistor (value of your choice), although the common favorites I’ve seen used are between .75 Ohms thru 1.5 Ohms.  I’m currently using .91 Ohms on the tweeter and .75 Ohms on the mids.  I’m going to experiment with some different values from .5 Ohms thru 1.2 Ohms to find the best balance...reduce the glare without rolling off too much high end.    

Each tweeter and mid panel have their own dedicated fuse, so removing the tweeter fuse allowed me to hear how much glare was also coming through the upper mids.

In that case, they would have in all probability put it before the filter (cap/coil) so as not to affect the crossover slopes. 

I have MAGNEPAN 2.7i in an acoustically treated room and I don’t hear any glare or harshness in these two examples. Come to think of it, i don’t hear much glare or harshness in this room anyway.