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Glare on Choral recordings, classical vocals

Dear all,

I'm hoping for some clarity on an issue of the quality of choral vocals in digital recordings. It's either my system or the recordings. There is a glare and harshness in the crescendos, and I wonder if it's natural room clipping in the studio or cathedrals in which they are recorded (the delay in some of these spaces can lead to a natural harshness and smearing of the sound), or if I have poor setup in terms of the DAC and/ or the preamp. I use a B&K PRO-10MC and a Schiit Bifrost Multibit. This setup has resolved any issues with digital glare except in the domain of choral music. Do I have to suck it up and consider upgrading to the Gungnir or another device? Should I consider a tubed preamp, maybe the Schiit Freya?

The problem is far less noticeable on vinyl, but most of my choral collection is in the digital domain. 

I've always had problems with the Tallis Scholars recordings on the Gimell label, which are almost always recorded in cathedrals. However, I did listen once to a Tallis Scholars CD on a dealer's rig with a Conrad-Johnson tube pre and Totem Model 1 Signatures, and there seemed to be much better resolution, though this was 20 years ago and I think my younger self was just blown away by the sound in general.

I've noticed that audiophiles and reviewers seldom write about choral music. Is it because they don't like choral music, or is it because it is just really difficult to record choirs well, therefore making choral music a poor choice to show off a system?

Any choral music-loving audiophiles care to comment on their experiences and solutions? 
 
Many thanks,


Paul
paulburnett
bondmanp
1,816 posts
 
Everything counts!!!!  I enjoy the Talis Scholars recordings on the Gimel label in my modest system.  After adding a power filter, I noticed what sounded like clipping on louder passages of Talis Scholars recordings.  Long story, but it turned out to be the power filter.  Once I plugged the amp back into a wall outlet, the problem completely went away.  Cables matter, power matters, amps matter, DACs matter... see the theme here?  

Try swapping out one element of the signal chain at a time.  FWIW, I owned Vandy 1Cs for about 9 years.  Never got them to sound smooth in the upper-mids/lower treble.  I moved on to different speakers 8 years ago and have never looked back.  So, if you try swapping all the electronics and wires, and you still have the problem, think about your speakers.  Could it be the recordings?  Possibly, but if that were the case, some would sound better than others.  In my system, all but the very worst recordings are quite listenable, if less than ideal.  A decent system (even on a budget) that is carefully assembled with good synergy should make most recordings at least enjoyable.  That's my opinion, anyway.  And you know what they say about opinions!  ;-)  
goose
696 posts
 
A lot of good suggestions.  Do the cheap stuff first like using headphones.  Is there still a problem.  Can you try some other speakers even some monitor types to see if the distortion is still present.  Not all choral music would have this issue.  I am very sensitive to violin glare and harshness in digital.  I would bet it's a speaker or source issue.   
cjug
7 posts
 

How nice to read this thread. I haven’t noticed this until a few days ago and finally found this topic here.

While listening some choral classical music FLAC files using a cheap earbud style (but with the head band) Sony headphones I started to hear some strange noises during certain passages of the music, especially when the music was very busy, combining choirs and instruments. I would say that the sound was "pixelated" for a lack of a better description. Initially I thought perhaps the file had some encoding problem or the headphones were faulty.

I tried the same files on a Oppo BD-105 with a pair of Samson headphones and, the strange distortion was there, albeit much less noticeable. If I turned the volume higher I could notice it more. Next I tried one of the original CD where the FLAC file was extracted from and there were no differences, so the FLAC file was not the problem.

I normally don’t listen classical music with headphones so perhaps that is the reason I didn’t notice this issue before. If I played the music from the Oppo through my amp to my speakers it was more difficult to hear it, but with the right volume and being very close to them I could hear it.

After these initial tests I suppose the problem is related to the DACs at work here. At this time I am not willing to spend large sum of money on a new DAC, so any suggestion of a budget one, but which is capable to overcome this problem, is very welcome.

As a side note, I connected a pair of Jabra USB headphones that I use for work and these sounded much more muffled than the others, but they also didn’t revealed the "pixelated" sound.

 

abraxalito
93 posts
 

My experience mirrors that of @mahler123 - improving my DAC reduced the congestion at higher levels on choral material.

antigrunge2
1,417 posts
 

Harshness as you describe is most likely due to jitter. Better clocking of all devices, be they ethernet switches, your cd player, server or Dac is the remedy of choice. if digitsl is properly sorted, mistracking on vinyl is more probable than harshness on digital

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