After some research and help from Madisound, I found that adding a very small value resistor before the 18uf cap in the tweeter section will tame the tweeter without efecting slope or frequency of pass. All I had this weekend was a 2.5 ohm mills. I tried it and had great sucess taming. However is certainly was too much. I will be ordering an assortment of resistors and trying them out. I will post after I think I have found the right value. Did you say symbilance? I couldn't even listen to vinyl anymore untill I got my Maggies.

By simply increasing the resistance of R2 to taste will do the job.

I noticed much the same brihgtness when i first listened to them. It eased a bit when either the tweeters ( or my ears) finished breaking in. It got a little better when I upgraded the amp from a Denon reciever to a Rega Mira integated. The most improvement was from adding some room treatments. I added foam to reduce some of the first reflections and slap echo.

Now they sound really great on good recordings of jazz and classical. The room there in has a bass peak at 40hz and a suckout at 80Hz. It hink that the bass suck out contributes to the brightness on some recordings. I would definately treat your room and measure the bass response. I'm going to try the CARA speaker placement software too.

Long run I'm going to remove the crossovers from the speaker and make a MK I version to compare. Then I'll add a resistor to pad the tweeter down. Maybe even build my own. Then I can just use the one i prefer.

Good Luck.

Mike

BTW I've had a few people listen to them, and the more audiophile(fool) they are the more they like them. My neighbor that has some Focus audio speakers with SS9900 tweeters and Eton woofers really liked them. Didn't think they are bright at all.

Well, I finally did a bit more digging into the freq response of my pair of eros mkII. I contacted a local small speaker manufacture (Alegria Audio) that is very active in the DIY community to see if he would measure my speaker using his test equipment. He generously offered to do it for a few donuts (thanks Tim)!

Anyhow the speaker measures essentially flat, with just a small dip (-3 db) at 2300hz. The treble begins to roll off at 10k very gently to –8 or so at 20k. We took an off axis measurement and they were very flat at 30 deg or so off axis.

We then hooked it up to listen, and they sounded like a different speaker! The bass was very full and natural, as described by others. I think I just have the worst room on the planet. The treble was sweet and he commented favorably on the response of the tweeter.

BTW we listened to a few of his speakers afterwards and they sounded really good, very nice. He had a couple of models using the Extremis woofer, which had amazing bass. I wouldn’t hesitate to buy one of his designs.

mike

Mike,

From reading various resources on the web, any abrupt dip or bum in the lower treble area will either make the speaker sound harsh/forward or shut-in. So I think it is a serious design flaw.

Andy

On what do you base your opinion of a 'serious design flaw'? Are you a sound engineer/speaker designer or have you just read a load of stuff on the web? Don't take my question the wrong way...I'm just curious as to why you question Waynes design.

Personally, having initially experienced problems with a little brightness...I now absolutely love my speakers. They just show up crap recordings for what they are. I have played the same music on friends £X,000 Spendors with his Linn kit and they sound just the same. They have needed a bit of time to break in but I'm really pleased with them now.

I might invest in a valve amp in the future as these may calm down those poor recordings, but I'll try and demo one or two first as I have no experience with these amps.

Anyone used a valve amp with Eros before?

Cheers

Paul

Hey Paul,

I wasn't even going to respond to that...but oh well. I don’t think that anyone could characterize a –3db dip on axis as a “serious design flaw”. Maybe it was just an unfortunate choice of words. I was looking at an un-smoothed response that would look like a ruler if the standard smoothing were applied.

In any event, I have seen many multi thousand dollar speakers with a worse on axis response reviewed in Stereophile. Yet these speakers received great reviews. There is more to a speaker than the on axis response. Many designs might have a slight dip on axis that smoothes out off axis. The speakers power response, THD, and IMD are probably more important than a ruler flat frequency response.

I have had a few more people listen to them with very favorable comments. I have also listened to a few more commercial speakers in the 1 to 6k range which had a very similar tonal balance.

In addition, I finally found a placement that works better in my room. The suckout that I had in the 60 to 80hz range has filled in a bit (still down ~5db). This has helped dramatically. I think Paul hit the nail on the head, they are unforgiving of poorly mixed/recorded material. They sound quite phenomenal with anything that is well mixed.

For example if anyone has the Billy Joel greatest hits 2 cd set from around 1988, I challenge you to find any decent speaker that will play that recording well. Sounds terrible, even in my car (unless you boost the bass). Almost all of the eighties hard rock/metal and most 90s grunge sounds terrible. In contrast Dave Brubeck (Sony remaster), Brad Mehdau, Dave Holland, Tord Gustavsen, Perfect Circle (13th step), NIN (Fragile and With Teeth), and well recorded classical to numerous to mention all sound great.

With all that said, I will still try the MKI crossover ( I have all the parts, just no time) and pad the tweeter a bit to see what I prefer…I’m just an inveterate tweaker. I’ll let every one know what I find out.

mike