Quest for Audiophile Zen

I had an awefully bright system with Thiel 1.5s. Two things did the trick and a third is on it's way. 1) Like Mcne said, try repositioning your speakers and avoid toe-in. 2) Try MIT MH-750 speaker wire and MI-330 interconnects. The newer MIT interconnects are impedance matched to your amp. Your's wasn't on the list but I'm sure contacting MIT will get you the right match. Thiels seem to really like networked cables. 3) I'm getting a set of Sound Anchors stands. You don't want the aluminum tweeter pointing right at your ears. With the 1.5s the stands will lift the tweeter about a foot over my head in the listening position. I anticipate this do work beautifully. Granted the 3.6s are a good deal taller than the 1.5s but it maybe the case.

I don't want to sound like I'm knocking the Thiels. They'll just bring out the worst in a system that doesn't "gel" with them. The MIT cabling and repositioning already has the brightness 90% tamed for me. The Thiels are also very position sensitive. Even a half inch change can bring noticably different sound.

Hope this helps. leo.

Gotta start with the Thiels in the room.
First order crossovers can require careful placement, and most Thiels sound a bit uptilted in any but the deadest rooms. Blah, blah, blah...we all know this.
Here's a smaller bit of it, though:
I was REALLY surprised at how floating my previous old CDP (Rotel 855) on a Neuance iso-shelf, although NOT changing the sound spectrally, but by improving the coherence of the frequency range resulted in a more unified, musical integrity that allowed me to accept some brightness because
`of improved resolution. Pretty interesting. I'd try popping your Adcom on a Neuance before replacing it or smothering it with a too-warm cable. You don't want to suck the air out of it.
Does your room have wall-tp-wall carpeting? Are you absorbing first reflections off the sidewalls? The point is to tame the 2-6kHz stuff without rolling off the 10-20kHz air.
Good luck.

Are you using any nice power cables?

I am using a chang power cord for the amp and an audioquest ac-15 for the cd player. I also use a chang lightspeed 9600 for the amp and have a MIT z-isolator plugged into it for the cd player. I plan to upgrade cords. I want to thank everyone for their constructive input. My main area of concern, however was opinions regarding upgrading the adcom gcd750 cd player. I am leaning towards a modified sony 9000es, resolution audio cd55 or arcam fmj23. Any other suggestions or feedback on the above? thanks

Dump the metal domed, harmonically thin 3.6's - way over-rated current hogs. Sorry, but someone's gotta say it... I can't even imagine how harsh 3.6's would sound running Adcom up front through a passive. Its frightening.

Seriously though, here's what I'd do: sell the 3.6's - some long time follower of Stereophile will buy them - and get a Coincident used that can be used with lower powered amps yet is relatively full ranged; sell the LLano because you don't need to dump all that current into the 3.6's massive crossover anymore and get a nice integrated tubed amplifier, say, a used AirTight ATM300 (since you go integrated you can take the LLano $ plus the passive $ plus a bit more and hopefully flag a ATM300 at $3500); dump the MIT and go with Goertz because you don't need the MIT to roll off the Thiels anymore (although Leoturetsky makes a good point above); if you can find any money then upgrade the CD, and only pump $ into the power when these other things are fixed. Good luck.