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.
Very rare for Duelund 16ga tinned copper to be called harsh, yes, I've seen a few reports but generally Duelund products natural timbre. On the other hand 16ga is rather thin gauge for speaker cable, may be emphasizing upper mids and highs.
I ran PL Dialogue a bit ago, preferred EL34 vs KT. Also run Duelund wire in my modified Khorn crosssovers, they are not harsh or unnatural, no way. |
@whyrichard There you go. Cardas are generally my go to cable, never any irritations, resolution/transparency goes up as you go up the line. I borrowed large number of cables over fair amount of years from CableCompany, and I came out with Cardas at the end of things. As for Clear IC, just happened to purchase one just a few minutes ago! Also use Golden Reference, oldie but goodie. Still don't get the reports of shrillness with Duelund cable, as IC's they on warm, lower resolution side of things, other issues in system or lack of burn is problem if hearing upper mid and high issues. |
Certainly major things like room, hearing critical and first things to look to. And assuming the general presentation is to OP's satisfaction he's inquiring about specific anomalies which with some fine tuning could be taken care of. I keep a wide variety of tuning devices such as footers, different stand configurations, cables, etc on hand for just these occasions. There have been some valid suggestions over the thread, up to OP to make informed decision. Unfortunately, sometimes only direct experience will provide the correct solution, one may make mistakes along the way, this not failure, rather a learning experience. |
Perhaps the simplest and most effective thing would be to add Duelund 0.01uf bypass cap to those Mundorfs. You could be quite surprised by how such a little tweak can alter voicing in such a profound way. In my case needed a bit more air, spaciousness on top, went with the Duelund silver bypass cap, wonderful add! Read the many reviews on these. As for Duelund general house sound, natural, effortless sound quality are in the substantial majority of reviews, and this my experience with a their caps, resistors, wire over many years. Negative reviews are outliers, some other issue in those setups, one can likely find negative reviews on virtually every audio product ever produced.
The Cardas Clear IC while a very nice cable isn't going to solve this issue, in fact it could exacerbate the issue being a more resolving cable than Duelund. |
