My battle with sibilance.


At the minimum sibilance is annoying to me. Its only present on a small percentage of my records. However today I wanted to see if I could improve it. The song in question is Men at Work's "Down Under". The cartridge is an Ortofon Cadenza Bronze retipped by Soundsmith. I went through a lot of the protocols for abating annoying sibilance.
1.My anti skate was not optimally set so I thought and I adjusted to less using a dead spot on a test record. I know some people don't agree with this. I tried Soundsmiths method but until I see a video I won't understand it.
2. I adjusted my VTA to at least 20 degrees. I realized it was off. It was set at 12-15 degrees. I know the Shibata stylus is sensitive to VTA.
3. I checked the VTF and it was set at the manufacturers suggestion at 2.5 grams. Which is dead in the middle of 2.3 to 2.7. I adjusted to 2.62. A lot of people think the higher range is optimum.
3. I made sure my stylus was absolutely clean.
Guess what? After all this, the sibilance was less but still there. As a check I listened to the song in streaming and it was in the recording!!! However not as bad as my record before my TT adjustments. So I'm happy now my TT might sound better on other recordings. Anyway I hope my fellow members here have had some success on sibilance and maybe some will benefit from what I did.

blueranger

Showing 7 responses by rauliruegas

@mijostyn : "  As I said before I doubt Wilson did things by mistake.."

only your doubt because the dip exist by the crossover frequency in that range. Normally the midrange/tweeter crossover goes from 2.5khz to around 4khz. There is no mistakes D. Wilson was an expert for all his audio experiences through his life .

Btw, yes sibilance is not a defined distortion as THD or IMD but at the end several developed system kind of distortions can accentuate the sibiliance issue, this is what happened with the OP that after to fix the cartridge/tonearm  the sibilance sound does not disappears but gone way lower and that's too my first hand experiences about.

R.


Dear @mijostyn : ""  you do not trust my measurements..."""

No, I trust in your measurements there is nothing to makes me doubt about. It's your conclusion in where I disagree.

""  I must be a very lucky guy. I hardly ever have to reach for my sibilance prese....""

there is no lucky but learned knowledge levels through the years what permit your system to perform the way it does. Yes, sometimes by " accident " we discovered " something that helps the system to improve but still we " learned " with.

"" I did not start this thread. I was just responding to the OP trying to shed some light on the situation. I am not sibilance crazy.  ""

but even that the OP " fixed "/lower the sibilance level in his system you posted that what some were posted on the sibilance issue was more about distortion levels and not true sibilance problem because the OP achieved a lower sibilance level after he made it a check up to the cartridge/tyonearm overall set up and he found out was wrong and from there came those distortions that accentaed the sibilance issue.

R.


Dear @mijostyn : You are biased on that frequency range were our ears are more sensitive and you said that Wilson on purpose did it " something " in its crossover as other speaker manufacturers and some recordings labels some times but all those just or did not happens in the past or does not happens today. No evidence at all.

After all the information that I read over my research about I don’t need your notch filter. My system handled really good sibilance, not that does not exist but it’s not a true problem.

In today re-issues as the Rickie Lee Jones " It’s like this " you can be aware how the recording engeneer/producer of that Sheridan LP was made it: putting up-front her voice and due the tone of her voice the recording makes a little or to much hot down there. In the first track when you listen the word " shake/shaking " I noted a little sibilance but a very high volume.

Anyway, you can follow with your biased subject, not me because exist hundreds of speakers with a different frequency signature " window ", thousands and thousands of LP/CD recorded in several different ways and with different frequency " window " and each one of us has too ears with different frequency " windows ". That’s all, each one of us try to fix each one of us " problems " in our room/systems. You pointed out several times how you try to fix it: manipulating the system frequency response.

An audio system is a chain of several links and each one has its own every kind of distortion levels that at the end is the system noise floor level and I think you could have a problem down there because your system sibilance " problem " and how you fix it when appears. Higher system noise floor makes sibilance more apparent, yes that noise at the end means distortion levels.

Through the years and with out really looking to improve my system noise floor level I did it when I change my tonearms internal wire cooper by silver wires, when I changed system cables for Analysis Plus silver/cooper, when I take out all the input fuses in the electronics, when I change the power electrical cable for silver cable, when I changed the fancy/boutique speaker crossover capacitors for Wima/Kemet ones, etc, etc.
The noise floor level in my room/system is extremely low and this helps a lot against sibilance goes down too.

R.


Dear  @mijostyn : I understand all what you said and yes no one of us can be sure what reviewers or speaker manufactured really do it but at least we can " work " with the " evidence " they show that we have on hand because  like it or not are the only " facts " we have around other than each one of us personal experiences.

You named Wilson and if you or any one else try to find out directly from Wilson the precise frequencies in the crossover of each of their models just you can get it, no information about.

Now, you have not evidence true evidence facts on the sibilance issue, what you posted till today has no evidence shows no single facts.

Yes, you are sharing your experiences and what is functioning for you what meet your MUSIC/sound priorities. That's all.

Fortunatelly I don't have sibilance true problems in my room/system so your " gundry dip " is useless for me.

I wish you really show clear and precise facts not coming for you but from other " sources ". In the mean time as I told you we all should " works " with the facts that comes from manufacturers and reviewers. I'm speaking of facts.

You show through your posts the different problems you have with your room/system and how you are fixing it. Thank's for that. Always is time to learn and I learned through this thread.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.






mijostyn : The posted speakers measurements choosed were " contemporary " . Here an ADS vintage monitor from the late 70's- early 80’s. You can go to the last page ( 8 ) to read some measurements.

http://sportsbil.com/ads/l-2030-brochure.pdf

R.
@mijostyn """ : a mild dip at those frequencies. """, yes because it’s where the crossover frequency belongs , JA stated it.


"" . a very common approach to making certain program sources more listenable. ""

approach by whom because we are not talking about recording proccess but in specific about speakers and I took Wilson because you named but the speaker design behavior that you support and through almost any of the several JA speakers measurements just don’t confirm what you said but only confirm that your take does not exist.

""" The Maxx 2’s are a totally different speaker and they were not measured near field individually. """

you just don’t read it, here again. Btw, we are not reviewing the speaker only the " gundry dip ", that’s all:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/wilson-audio-specialties-maxx2-loudspeaker-measurements

Here a way different speaker that again confirm you have , at least, a misunderstood about:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/sonus-faber-venere-25-loudspeaker-measurements


I can show you 10 other different speaker measurements but at this time will be futile.


R.




Dear @mijostyn @lewm : "" Some speaker manufacturers, to make their speakers sound better at low volumes and reduce sibilance tuned their speakers with a built in Gundry dip. Wilson did this with the Watt/Puppy. ""

Low volumes, Gundry dip and Wilson speakers? well maybe you think you are rigth but unfortunatelly you are wrong and with out evidence about your statement.

First mistake that never existed or exist that ( ? ) Gundry dip :


"" Well, of course having found this, I have to jump in. My father, Dick Gundry, who spent almost all his working life in the BBC and was for many years responsible for maintaining technical standards in BBC Radio (which have sadly gone down since his retirement in about 1971), and who was known behind his back as golden ears, would not have been pleased to have his name attached to a deliberate departure from a flat frequency response in loudspeakers. Has anyone any idea on how this term arose? It must have been much more recent than 1971.

One of my father’s responsibilities back in the late 1950s and early 1960s was the development of stereo techniques in preparation for a means to broadcast it. ...............the uniformity was considered more important than perfect flatness, and thus the speakers may have shown the "Gundry dip". However it would not have been a design aim but a side-effect, and in any case my father would have had no input to the designs...

Kenneth Gundry, San Francisco ""




In 2009/2010 we can read these statements by a true expert:


"" Neither I nor Floyd Toole had never heard about the Gundry dip until about 2 months ago when an audio reviewer used the term in an email to us. Many poorly designed 2-way loudspeakers already have dips in the sound power response in the cross-over range 1-3 kHz where the directivity of the woofer is too high compare to the directivity of the tweeter at those frequencies. As a result, this produces a notch in the sound power response of the loudspeaker, usually followed by a peak. Depending on the bandwidth and depth of the notch, it is the peak that is often heard as sounding objectionable (harshness, hardness or excessive brightness). The extent to which this a problem depends on whether you are sitting on or off axis, and the reflectivity of the room.

To some degree, Harmon/Sean Olive’s research strongly asserts that listeners will universally prefer a flat frequency response under blind listening conditions. That alone is a pretty good reason. ""

S.Olive has several papers in the AES when he made it a lot of speakers research at Harmon, including why we need several subwoofers in a home audio systems but in this research ( white papers ) stated that 2 subs are ok at one seat position.



More information for the ones that really know about:


""" There is much myth, folklore and misunderstanding about this subject.

The ’BBC dip’ is (was) a shallow shelf-down in the acoustic output of some BBC-designed speaker system of the 1960s-1980s in the 1kHz to 4kHz region. The LS3/5a does not have this effect, neither in the 15 ohm nor 11 ohm, both of which are in fact slightly lifted in that region.

According to Harbeth’s founder, who worked at the BBC during the time that this psychoacoustic effect was being explored, the primary benefit this little dip gave was in masking of defects in the early plastic cone drive units available in the 1960’s. A spin-off benefit was that it appeared to move the sound stage backwards away from the studio manager who was sitting rather closer to the speakers in the cramped control room than he would ideally wish for. (See also Designer’s Notebook Chapter 7). The depth of this depression was set by ’over-equalisation’ in the crossover by about 3dB or so, which is an extreme amount for general home listening. We have never applied this selective dip but have taken care to carefully contour the response right across the frequency spectrum for a correctly balanced sound. Although as numbers, 1kHz and 4kHz sound almost adjacent in an audio spectrum of 20Hz to 20kHz, the way we perceive energy changes at 1kHz or 4kHz has a very different psychoacoustic effect: lifting the 1kHz region adds presence (this is used to good effect in the LS3/5a) to the sound, but the 4kHz region adds ’bite’ - a cutting incisiveness which if over-done is very unpleasant and irritating. """"


Wilson speakers?:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/wilson-audio-specialties-wattpuppy-system-8-loudspeaker-measurem...

John Atkinson has a lot of solid experiences about making " hundred’s " of speaker measurements ( in room and anechoic. ) and you can read in the Watt measurements this JA statement:


" The Wilson speaker’s lateral-dispersion plot (fig.7) indicates a broadly even radiation pattern, with an off-axis notch developing around 4kHz, where the on-axis response has a small peak. In the vertical plane (fig.8), the treble region doesn’t change much for listening axes on or just below the tweeter. However, a large suckout develops at 3.3kHz above the tweeter axis, which I assume is the frequency at which the WATT’s tweeter crosses over to its woofer. ""

Here another Wilson measurements:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/wilson-audio-specialties-maxx2-loudspeaker-more-measurements

JA: """ but the most obvious difference between the speaker’s balance in the two rooms is that the MAXX 2s produce an impressively flat midrange and treble at Paul’s considerably greater listening distance...."""


Take a look of your " Gundry dip " in this speaker measurements:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/dynaudio-evidence-master-loudspeaker-measurements

D.Wilson before designed the Watt was some years a recording/producer engineer.
The Watt does not came at " random " but because the high knowledge levels of what are the needs for a speaker recording studio monitoring.

I could think that you own the recordings under D.Wilson label. Well the speaker monitoring ( in location ) was the Watt and the WAMM at Wilson Audio. Great recordings and a must to listen it in the rigth room audio system.

mijostyn you have to make more research about. There is a lot of expert information in the internet.

Yes, lewm is rigth just from the begining and as he I never heard before about that Gundry myth. Now I learned why.


R.