Phantom Gold brightness

[Axel]

Hi all,

I would like to hear your experience with the Phantom Gold regarding the brightness. I have the feeling that they (2.0) sound a bit bright. With certain songs I feel some fatique in my ears. 

I'am coming from the Kef Ls50 wireless, and with the kefs I didn't have this "issue"

They are only a few days old, so might be because of that..

If you feel the phantom gold bright and fatiguing, it must be because one of the following:
- a room too small or too bright (with a lot of glass surfaces for example). Any room becomes fatiguing as you turn up the volume, each room as a maximum volume before fatigue comes in due to reverberation of treble sound on hard surfaces.
remedy : find a bigger room, open the glass windows or draw curtains before them, or better listen outdoor (I am listening at a phantom on my terrace right now: I could listen for hours without any fatigue. The listening fatigue comes reverberation of treble sound on "hard" surfaces: the best listening room is no room at all).
- you listen in a small room from a place too close to the phantom's tweeters. Remedy: move back as much as possible and angle them toward the side walls.
- you listen to old CD recordings of the 70s or 80s (example: streaming old CDs of Dire Straits instead of the remastered versions). All CDs from the 70s and 80s have terribly fatiguing highs. Remedy: listen to remastered versions of the old CDs on Spotify connect: the difference is huge, for example if you listen to Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms: the old CD version is very fatiguing.
- you listen to low resolution streaming,  : remedy: listen only to high resolution streaming, such as "high quality" on Spotify (you have to select it in Spotify connect, it does not come by default).
- you are listening with bluetooth mode. Remedy: listen only in wifi mode
- you are used to speakers that don't have a linear response in the treble zone up to 20khz : those speakers are more forgiving of badly recorded or low quality resolution streaming, therefore they sound less fatiguing when listening to low resolution streaming or to streamings of old CDs of the 70s. Remedy: Fire the Phantoms toward the side walls, instead of pinching them toward the center, or if you still hear too much highs for your taste, fire them toward the back wall !
It is also true that the phantoms need some breaking in, much like most high end speakers (I have noticed that most show rooms don't allow the phantoms to break in enough, so that the phantoms never sound as good as they do at my home)    Remedy: play them day and night for a while...
If none of the above is working, may be you are not ready to listen to the beautiful linear music of the phantom golds, then you may be you should settle for  some lesser "forgiving" speakers...

Well, I've listened to them in dedicated rooms and on several different locations.  

For me the sound was too direct and too much in my face. I would say for certain genres they're fine but not for the more subtle music in my opinion. Also I found the bass a bit too rough and not detailed enough, certain songs with drums lost the idea of hearing a real drum and sounded somewhat artificial. But since sound is very subjective, this might all be a matter of taste.

I wish they added room eq, this would've helped for the brightness and also the somewhat inaccurate bass, it's hard to get accurate bass without proper eq. 

I've listened to many sources, flac files, Tidal, Blu ray, but too often I felt fatigue. For me the downsize had more cons than pros, so that's why I returned them.

What were you downsizing from? Do you have another Devialet product? Just me being nosy!