[I.Greyhound Fan]

Tangram, do you have the speakers turned in so that the tweeters cross at your seating position? If so, slowly toe them out.  I am sure you already know this though.

When I had auditioned the M3's I thought on some music the tweeter was too hot for my tastes, but I have wood floors and lots of windows.  I am very sensitive to hi frequencies.  I toned down the tweeter in my Maggies using a tweeter resistor.

[dallaire1]

Tangram, I posted you the freq. response of the M3's in my room at the MLP. I have the same dilemma in my room. The tweets have a shelf at about 2.5k-4.5k. Its on the second page of this thread, don't know if you caught it or not ?

[Tangram]

Tangram, do you have the speakers turned in so that the tweeters cross at your seating position? If so, slowly toe them out.  I am sure you already know this though.

When I had auditioned the M3's I thought on some music the tweeter was too hot for my tastes, but I have wood floors and lots of windows.  I am very sensitive to hi frequencies.  I toned down the tweeter in my Maggies using a tweeter resistor.

I tried all the way from no toe-in to tweeters crossing in front of my nose. The tweeter’s high dispersion design means that playing with toe-in has less impact than I’ve found with other speakers. I settled on a common toe-in angle:tweeters pass just by my shoulders.

[Tangram]

Tangram, I posted you the freq. response of the M3's in my room at the MLP. I have the same dilemma in my room. The tweets have a shelf at about 2.5k-4.5k. Its on the second page of this thread, don't know if you caught it or not ?

Hi, yes, sorry I saw that. My bad for not responding. Interestingly, when I measured my room with Room EQ Wizard, the hot tweeters didn’t stand out on the FR plot. What did stand out was a 50 Hz hump that surprised me, but FWIW, I love the bass presentation as it is.

[dallaire1]

No problem, did you happen to look at spectral decay ? sure you probably did. That is strange, is your response looking like a "house curve" or "flat"? I am a believer in the house curve vs. flat. Flat for me, sounds way to bright.

[Tyson]

Hi, yes, sorry I saw that. My bad for not responding. Interestingly, when I measured my room with Room EQ Wizard, the hot tweeters didn’t stand out on the FR plot. What did stand out was a 50 Hz hump that surprised me, but FWIW, I love the bass presentation as it is.

You might be a person that genuinely prefers ribbon tweeters (and narrower dispersion).  I know I am.  Which is why I went with the X3, that tweeter is astonishingly clean, the best tweeter I've ever heard, really.  If the M3's don't work out, take a look at the X series, they might be a better match for people that are ultra-sensitive to these ranges (which again, includes me). 

[Mr. Big]

Our experiences are our experiences and extrapolating that to others requires caveats and asterisks. We hear differently, our systems are different, our rooms are different, and we listen at different volumes. In my case, I like to listen at 75-85 db, Weighted, with peaks exceeding 85 db on occasion. This may be louder or quieter than what others listen at, depending on tastes, living circumstances etc. If I listen at 70-75 db, there is no issue with peaky highs. If it was an issue with my system, then shouldn't the problem be with either the recording or the speakers? Why can I listen to one recording at the same volume but with the only change being the speakers and not have the issue if the issue isn't the speakers? I guess you could say that the audio chain is synergistic and that changing one component may affect the way it interacts with another component. Maybe because the bass is so clean on the M3s I am pushing the volume higher than before (bass was previously the limiting factor in my room when it came to listening volume).

[Mr. Big]

Each speaker will bring out an area where they make something sound better in comparison, if not all speakers would sound the same. Same for gear, I always noticed some recordings sound better when I change some gear, and others that I like before sound not as good.  Louis Armstrong hits highs that would tear your head off, on the Spatial they are but nothing over the top or aggressive. But then it is my room and my gear and my cables. Only saying I am not finding that, at 1st I did as I have written but one year on, and with learning how to work with the speaker setup and a cable change I must say they are sounding very, very enjoyable. Hope you get them smoking for you!

[Tangram]

I am glad you don't have the same issue. That gives me hope. But I doubt that my all-analog system, with a high-end turntable/arm/cartridge, tubes in the line and phono stages, and using one of the best Class A amps around, is going to cause the treble problem. Cables? Well, anything is possible but swapping those will be the last resort. Additional room treatments? Again, worth thinking about. But for now, I'm going to take the lazy man's approach and insert a tone control between my preamp and amp. The short-term goal is to enjoy one of my favorite jazz albums of all time again, an album that has sounded sublime on every other speaker I've had in my room.

Each speaker will bring out an area where they make something sound better in comparison, if not all speakers would sound the same. Louis Armstrong hits highs that would tear your head off, on the Spatial they are but nothing over the top or aggressive/ But then it is my room and my gear and my cables. Only saying I am not finding that at 1st I did as I have written but one year on and with learning how to work with the speaker setup and a cable change I must say they are sounding very, very enjoyable. Hope you get them smoking for you!

Thanks for that. I've calmed down a bit. What I think the issue is as follows. Because the bass on the Spatials doesn't excite my room as much as a box speaker, I am actually playing music louder than in the past. On top of that, I haven't had a speaker as sensitive (and therefore dynamic) as the Spatials before so when the music gets loud (on, say jazz trumpet blasts) I am hitting transients that are exceeding 85 db. I have had issues with "brightness" with other speakers when the volume has been cranked. Without really knowing it, I have been inching the volume up and bam!, same brightness issue with the Spatials. This is a long way of saying that I will likely need to change up my room treatments, possibly adding more diffusion than what I currently have. Possibly to the back wall.

[Mr. Big]

A more sensitive and dynamic speaker will sound brighter than one that is not and yes, it is due to volume and ease of reproducing microdynamics, the M3's can swing easily from soft to very loud, and the less compressed the recording is the more you will hear it and have to turn the volume down, over-compressed recording much less so because of cause everything if even and loud.  The sound from the M3's is louder than you think and it's due to how clean and distorted they are with no bass overhang or boom on every recording due to the room exciting the bass which most of us are used to unless you owned a speaker like Quads and heard the lack of box and bass bloat, the open baffle speaker will be a learning experience. So there will be a learning curve, forget how your past box speakers sounded, your talking apples and oranges. Defusion is great for opening the sound up, but it can make things sound brights. Like Quads, the Spatials radiate sound backward. corner bass traps would work well. The front wall also has a panel behind the speakers. 




The best box speakers I owned were the Dynaudio Confidence 5's. Greta bottom end, mids, and highs, the bottom end could shake the room, but they could not touch the open baffle bass of the M3's and other Spatial Audio speakers. They are very balanced top to bottom, and what I like about them is they can sound like whatever the recordings do, sometimes I say where the bottom-end, the next track it hitting me in the chest so unlike most box speakers the bass is not always the gorilla in the room. Just Listened to Boz Scaggs "What New" recording which he did jazz standards, and it was by far the best I ever heard it and I've heard it sound good but never this good from top to bottom, and the tone and color of each instrument, and his vocals right in the room, full, warm and natural. 

Now with my room, floor, and carpeting I like the sound of my speakers without the spikes, I get more of everything without them, details, weight, tone, and color, with the spikes it is still there it will sound more ethereal, but I like the body and weight to the music, I use the spikes then I don't. I like something about both, but my ear always takes me back to no spikes. Plus they are easy to toe-in and move, lots of good articles on why spikes heard the sound more than help, I know on my Quads with spikes are would run out of the room, the sound because so titled the upper-mids and highs, sounded like a system where you turned the treble controls up. The same effect over many years using them under gear, if you like only clean detail then that is the way to achieve it, but that is not how real music sounds. Listen to a human voice when we speak it is not overly detailed, sharp, or airly. it laid back, had a throat and body to it and chest. A speaker designer gave me this tip once, listen to a human voice, 2nd advice from him, the bottom-end of reproduction supports all that we hear above it so the bottom-end impacts the mids- and the highs. Spatial's nail that.   
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