I haven't seen any discussion about trying to use felt for reducing brightness so I'd like to bring it up. First an intro:
Setup:
I have experience with the M60's for about half a year now. My listening setup is for stereo only. The integrated amp is a Musical Fidelity A308, and the source is a Sony CDP-CX455 changer. It's setup in a loft-style apartment with high ceiling and bare hardwood floors (rather reflective conditions). I’ve experimented with placement and the best results seem to be with the speakers about 7' apart, 1' from the rear wall, no toe-in. Listening position is about 8' from speakers.
A bit too bright:
Although I like the lively, dynamic and detailed presentation of the M60's, they sound a bit too bright causing ear fatigue after half hour or so. I only use original CD's (no burned cds, mp3's, ...) and the music is mostly rock, not at very high volumes. The sibilance is noticeable with the 'sssss'. For example, I consider Morrissey's 'You are the quarry' a well mixed album but still the s’ can have a metallic shrill to them. On my other setup using Mission 773e speakers there is no hint of sibilance (they have silk dome tweeters, granted).
Resistors:
I read on this board about using resistors to try and tame the highs so I called Joe and was promptly sent a 2.7 Ohm pair. After having them for a month or so they had to come out. It did tame the highs but the sound lost too much of it’s sparkle, and although it reduced, did not completely remove the bright/metallic s’. The problem is that the resistors equally lower the entire frequency range of the tweeter, thus reducing upper midrange clarity which I’m sure the folks at Axiom worked hard to achieve. After another month, I again couldn’t deal with the brightness and thought that a lower resistor value was more appropriate. I went to Fry’s and bought a pair of 10 W, 1.5 Ohm resistors for $1 or so, similar looking to the ones I got from Axiom. I have an LCR meter at work and tested them, and they were well matched to less than 1%. For the M60’s, the 1.5 Ohm value is a lot more appropriate than the 2.7 Ohm in terms of balancing reduction of tweeter glare and not muting too much the upper mids. Still, the ‘ssss’ can be fatigue-inducing at times. I wish there was a way to tone down the sibilance without muting the upper mids. Probably a better CD player and adding a carpet would help, but it’s not an option at this point. As a side-note, I read on another thread that Axiom started charging $30 for the resistors?! I hope that it’s not the case. They can be bought for far less and even if you include the price of the sliding contacts and shipping, I could understand $5, but $30? Axiom’s supposed to provide good value, right? Not wanting to sound negative, I do have to say that the presence of this forum as well as the excellent customer service speaks highly of Axiom.
Felt:
I recently came across an interesting board discussion about using felt around the tweeter to reduce the dispersion effects around the tweeter and was wondering if anyone’s tried it for their M60/80’s as a way to smooth the highs. Here’s the link:
http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/idealbb/view.asp?mode=viewtopic&topicID=31143&num=20&pageNo=1
This is very different from what some people on this board have tried:
http://www.axiomaudio.com/boards/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=HT&Number=70377&page=&view=&sb=&o=
I’d be curious to hear if anyone’s tried both the resistor and felt and how they feel about one vs. the other.
