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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
mihorn
718 posts
 

Whatever our ears/brain try to cover the truth, they can’t hide every thing. The truth is all audio systems sound un-listenable harsh. Human ears and brain trick men to not hear it. Many people (who don’t like hi-fi) hear the truth. Therefore, they call us audiofools. Watch below video. All audio speakers sound/behave like the left speaker. Test your system saying "hello" with your speaker playing. Alex/Wavetouch audio

Your speakers sound like the left speaker

OP    This song, horns seem to shatter.  This song, vocals seem to pierce. 

knotscott's avatar
knotscott
1,181 posts
 

The sources of those sibilance can come from all sorts of places, and can be tough to track down.  I chased similar issues for a while. It wasn’t just one notable thing in my case....it was little bits in a few areas.  

Some trial and error to remove traces of "glare" included changing interconnects (added Furutech Fa-AS22),  changing out cheap speaker jacks for pure copper, upgrading inductive cast resistors to non-inductive resistors in the crossovers, added 1/2" felt wedges around the tweeter, had the op amps in my DAC upgraded to MuseS02 and added a linear regulated power supply to replace a wall wart, upgraded some caps in my preamp, and did enough tube rolling until I got the right combination.  Maybe I got lucky, but that issue has been resolved. 

 

thriftyaudio's avatar
thriftyaudio
137 posts
 

Definitely a head scratcher. I would start with what is on hand. 

1) Try tube rolling with what you have.

2) Try rolling cables you may have on hand.

3) I have found the larger the speaker gauge, in my system, the clearer the sound. I have moved up to 7 gauge (WBC Quad Pro - a very affordable option).

4) Finally power cables. My experience suggests they impact bass clarity at a very high price. 

hertzhead
34 posts
 

In my experience it is the rare system that does not exhibit some harshness at times. I also believe that some recordings and masterings and pressings thereof have a bit of sharpness. But perhaps, most importantly, the Fletcher-Munson curves show that humans are most sensitive to frequencies from 1.5K to 6K, peaking at about 3.75K. By up to 10dB. Additionally, some of us are more bothered by these frequencies than others. And finally, the whole process of recording and playback from microphones to speakers is far from perfect. In fact, it's amazing to me that it works at all and sometimes even sounds like real music. 

glenmschneider
68 posts
 

I recently switched out my duelund 16ga interconnects exact because they seemed to be exaggerating the upper end. I switched them out to cables that I already had from a prior system (anticables “level5) and it was immediately noticeable. Not sure where I will end up in the cable search. On my prior system I went from the anticables to Cardas clear reflection to the duelund. I sold the Cardas so I can’t easily re-try them. 
let us know!

glen

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