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Last Critical Tweak… how to quell occasional high harshness…?

Dear Audiogon Community,

 

I am so impressed with the insight and obsession we all share with this musical alchemy of electrons. I write to address a simple problem through as simple (and hopefully relatively inexpensively) as possible… though before such elegant maneuvers, an overly verbose and fussy description:

 

 

Harshness in the highs…. Trumpets and some vocals now make my ears shrill at times. My aging ears! It is so close to musical bliss, but this slight edgyness must be quelled!

 

This song, horns seem to shatter. 

This song, vocals seem to pierce. 

 

I recently leveled an entirely new system. My last tweak was to move my main gain tube to Mullards, and the Brimar NOS tubes to the outer gain location. The mullards afforded a richness and expansiveness, a forward mid and elegance, but introduced the occasional shrillness which I seek to quell. 

 

My musical electron dance is as follows on the streaming side:

 

Nagra Streamer —> Audio Zen MC2 Coax —> Halo Audio Spring 2 Level 3 Kitsune —> Duelund 16 GA Interconnect —> Prima Luna Dialogue Premium HP —> Brimar NOS outer tube and Mullard NOS main gain tube —> Gold Lion KT77 Power tubes —> Duelund 16GA Speaker wire —> Pure Audio Project Duet Horn’s with a gold silver oil Mundorf Cap upgrade —> Duelund wire to the horn and the 15” Woofer. 

 

Fun yes! Devine! But how to quell this one last occasional shrillness?

 

Thoughts:

-Speaker Wire to 12 GA

-DAC - Amp Interconnect changed to something that mellows out the shrill

-Main Gain tube upgraded from a Mullard NOS to something else… (I believe there was a slightly higher grade Mullard?)

-Nagra Stream - DAC Coax cable upgraded to something mellower….?

 

Open to any and all suggestions! Thank you so much for your insights. 

 

R. 

whyrichard

Showing 1 response by audphile1

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
5,706 posts
 

Too many possible culprits. I’ll start with the simplest and the cheapest options-

1. Speaker placement - how far apart are your speakers (center to center); what’s the distance between center of horn driver to side wall and front wall (that’s the wall behind the speakers); This can easily influence the issue you describe 

2. Any acoustic treatments on any of these walls

3. Cables - I’ve had this issue with several interconnect cables I tried in my system   Onece I never had this issues with were Acoustic Zen Matrix Reference MkII and Absolute Copper. These cables are slightly warmer sounding with even top to bottom balance. On a cheap to test what interconnects can do, try these cables from Amazon - get the OCC version, replace all Deuland https://a.co/d/6a8DMZE

Also try their power cord on amp and other components including streamer - https://a.co/d/6nQEACK  

May be even give their OCC speaker cables a try

4. And this is a more controversial topic but this is absolutely critical in streaming - Ethernet cables, routers, other network components. You don’t mention your network config. If you have routers or switches in close proximity to your components and signal cables move all of it away to minimize RFI and EMI. For a more or less decent Ethernet cable try Try this cable - https://a.co/d/0gT7wnr

 

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