Likely culprit for harshness at higher volumes?

My experience is similar to Rockadanny's post.

I had metal dome tweeters that were toed in with cheap poorly made ICs but my SCs were budget 12 AWG wire. I had made incremental changes with ICs and SCs but the biggest change was going to soft dome tweeters.

Also I think another cause was lack of room treatment. I had lots of bare walls and minimal furntiure in my room at the time.

Saru, I suggested earlier and maybe missed it in one of your replies, but why not tell us where you are located. You may be surprised by other people who reside not too distant from you would be willing to help you out a bit.

Sebrof's comments about saturating your room (overdriving) is relavent. Every room will eventually hit a saturation point and performance can/will abruptly change when that happens.

I am still confused by the references to volume, but in particular you have made some statements about when you turn the volume up to painful levels (ie. well beyond your normal listening levels) is when you experience the greatest problems. I think a lot of us don't turn the music up to painful levels or over saturate our rooms. Part of my note on this is, why do you care what your system sounds like at levels well above what you will want to listen to it?

I am in Kalamazoo Michigan. If you reside near me, I would be happy to help you out. I have plenty of extra equipment (digital, preamps, amps, speakers), cables, sound panels.

Hi there,

Sorry, I missed that. I'm in northern CA in the outskirts of the Bay Area. It's relatively inconvenient except for the neighboring cows. :) Folks have been more than kind offering suggestions here on the forum, especially given my very modest system (My AVM2 may be the only unit worth mentioning and that's more than 10 years old).

The sound has actually improved dramatically since the thread started. I've actually to the point of indifference to the original issue that prompted me to start this thread (is not completely gone but it's approaching acceptance).

My I've noticed that the onion peeling has started. With relief of the original problem has come new 'concerns.' For example:

1) I'm now able to notice noise / hiss in what I believe is the content (for example, a track may start fine with just vocal and no instruments, but when the instruments start to kick in, I hear some background hiss / white noise).

2) I now realize that, whatever the musical merits of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue (Columbia 20-bit remastered version), I now notice what seems to be distortions at points in several tracks -- especially noticeable in the first few minutes of the first track. At least the sounds are not recognizable as any instrument I've heard before.

3) Something in my system / room is causing the low end to seem muffled (using the KEF C75) and poorly imaged. It's like basses span the soundstage are played behind a thick curtain. Still playing around with this. Here is one area where it would really help to have some known good content - I need to follow-up on some of the suggestions above, including getting the headphones that almarg recommended.

Sorry about my volume references -- this is still new to me and not sure how to describe stuff quickly.

I'm not trying to listen at painful volume levels -- I think I was just noting that the earlier harshness has seemed to move to these louder levels (at which I'm also noticing some additional non-musical sounds). Whereas the harshness that prompted this thread was at listening volume levels (where I can hear background instruments and where I start to feel enveloped in the music -- really hard to describe this -- it's as though music is a point source in the room at lower volumes, while at 'listening' volumes the music seems to fill the room and you feel like you're a part of it.

So, at this point, I think I've reached a point of acceptable resolution for the initial problem (still will continue to tweak) but and somewhat shifting focus to cheap, significant improvements to sound quality.

The sound quality seems to be the same between using toslink to my ARM2 (Burr Brown 24/96 DAC per the manual) and using analog (switching from 'digital' in Disc 1 to 'analog' on Disk 2 is seamless). So, based on what I've been learning so far, unless the AVM2 is generally considered a poor DAC/pre, this seems to suggest I should be looking at my amp or speakers (discounting the room once I get the headphones).

It's mostly academic at this point as I probably couldn't afford to replacing anything with something better. But, I'd like to isolate the issue so that I can keep an eye out for a bargain with the right attributes to make significant improvements to the listening experience. As I don't think I'm in the realm of diminishing returns yet, I think I can viably improve the quality w/out large net expenditures. At least I hope this is the case. :)

I was going to suggest the long wall placement, but it sounds like you've discovered this already. A room with lots of reflective surfaces can cause the sound to harden as the volume is increased, so you want to get the speakers away from walls as is practically possible.

For the bass issue, try moving the speakers closer or further away from the wall a couple inches at a time.

I have that "20-bit" KOB issue, and it does have a lot of distortion. Maybe someone can comment on the gazillion other KOB reissues.

As for hiss, it sounds like your system is just letting you hear what's on the recording. You might experiment with your tone controls on these recordings.

Thanks -- yes, I'm finding that small changes in speaker placement can dramatically change the experience. I'm overwhelmed by the number of degrees of freedom here: x,y,z,separation, toe-in, etc.

Seems like there should be a computer model that incorporates room dynamics via camera and microphone. Too complicate for us mere mortals. :)