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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
whyrichard OP
47 posts
 

I spent the day trying to diagnose the shrill, trying all sorts of things with the high pass filter, triad mode vs ultra linear…. I had distortion seemingly creep up in my left channel, which had me switching the tubes, the interconnects, and finally the speaker wire, from Left to Right. Only the speaker wire change changed the distortion from my left horn to my right horn. 

 

? 

 

I on a whim decided to swap out my Gold Lion KT 77 power tubes for my previous set, Tung Sol KT 120. And I think all the shrill is mostly tamed now. 

 

WTF??? 

Were my Gold Lion KT77’s slowly loosing their ability to do higher frequencies? 

Listening now to the Tung Sol KT 120’s, I am relieved… but I miss the qualities of the Gold Lion’s. I couldn’t stand the sense of mid range bloat to the Tung Sol’s, so I put the Gold Lions back in… the distortion seemed there for a track and then subsides… 

It’s a little frustrating. As my set of Gold Lion KT77’s are less than a year old. 

Do I find a new set of better Power Tubes? 

Endless…

 

r.

Post removed 
whyrichard OP
47 posts
 

… i seem to have identified a single Gold Lion kt 77 out of the 8 power tubes that was causing distortion. Luckily I had a single new GL KT77, which I used on another track which clearly was distorting on one channel…

 

Seems to have rectified that issue… will see if it rectifies the original issue…! Take some time. Apologies for the multiple posts…. Was a finicky day listening… i want to just listen to the music now please! 

Haha.

R.

lous's avatar
lous
211 posts
 

My best guess would be cables. Zavfino cables are the current giant killers.

mlsstl
1,483 posts
 

This was mentioned only two or three times so far, but there is a lot of variability in recordings.  Some recordings are intentionally in-your-face. Some may have been mixed, EQ'd and processed with studio speakers that were a bit recessed compared to your setup, so they brought the sound forward a bit.  There are lots of other possibilities, but I find the range of sound quality in recordings to be one of the biggest variables out there.  Keep in mind that tweaking your own system to improve the sound quality for one type of recording may worsen the quality for other types of recordings  

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