Speaker glare...help

I have not heard the Focal home audio speakers, but have read a lot about them and my brother-in-law auditioned them. I do have Focals in my car.

They seem to be love or hate type speakers. The glare you talk about is really apparent in my car. I am probably going to replace the tweeters with something else. I have tried pretty everything else I can think off.

I did find that MAC palladium ICs helped some in the car. I also have them in my home system. They make the high end more "musical". I bought them based on two reviewers, and for once they both got it right. Of course swapping out ICs to find the right combo gets pretty expensive. And MAC has a pretty steep restocking fee for the palladiums. They are fairly fragile apparently. I was lucky, I found used ones.

im thinking its the Focals ..

From Chart 3 - Total Harmonic Distortion + Noise for Mini Utopia - the metal tweeter may be misbehaving at 9 Khz (looks like it resonates at 18 Khz). Since this is probably not musically related it may add an audible brilliance or sheen or air to some sounds (only 20 db down from main signal or about 10% distortion). This distortion is probably in the frequency range for cymbals or higher (what you hear after the cymbal is struck)...it may also be inaudible to you (most adults cannot hear much if anything above 16 Khz anyway)

If this is what you are hearing as "glare" then it probably is the speakers. Otherwise it is unlikely to be the speakers but could be the recording or type of music you like.

Hi everyone

A'gon member DCstep stated:

" Midrange glare is an indicator of less than ideal speaker placement. Room treatment comes after speaker placement."

I believe I'm getting listener fatigue due to mid-range glare in my listening room. I'm trying to fix the problem methodically now and am trying to gather info before I go nuts. Now does speaker height also fall under speaker placement? Does the height of the mid-range/tweeter affect gmid-range glare? Currently right now I have a pair of KEF Q-90s raised 10" so that the Uni-Q driver is right at my ear level. I'm wondering if I go to a shorter stand if that would help with the glare. I'm trying to price a stand made of maple or myrtle wood with brass footers. The stand w/ brass footers would be about 4-5" high which would drop the Uni-Q mid range about 5-6" below my ears when I'm listening.

Thanks

All speaker glare I've experienced (and since resolved) in my system seemed to have to do with cabling, ICs and SCs.

Hi Rockadanny

Thanks for chiming in. I'm in the midst of breaking in new SCs (Zu Missions) and trying them soon to combat the mid-range glare I'm getting hit with. I've gone through a bunch of different ICs and I'm happy with the current set I have. If the new SCs don't work I'll be back to the drawing board.