2. digital
  3. 195421-200780

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
46 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
1,481 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  

pcrhkr's avatar
pcrhkr
314 posts
 

When I built my speakers, I installed Lpads for the mid and highs. Purests might say this affects sound in a bad way, but oh well 

I find the controls very helpful if a recording was not EQed properly, which happen often in CD recordings, and I've heard it on Lps too.

The most cost effective is to change to he room environment to reduce the harshness. I find it around the 8k frequency range. A carpet on the floor, reposition the speakers, find a pretty fabric wall drop in back of where you sit. The room makes a big difference.

More to discover