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Sibilance in recordings: your experience the same?

I have just finished a remodeling project and added new 20amp lines to feed my system. Rather suddenly I became annoyed with excessive sibilance on Patricia Barber's Mythologies recording (CD). I had never noticed this before. I looked at my system configuration and could find no obvious changes in the pre/post-remodeling arrangement of my power cords and ICs, so I have to ask if others have had the same experience with this recording. While I'm at it, are there other recordings, say, in the female singer/songwriter genre with inherently excessive sibilance? The really annoying thing about sibilance is once you hear it, YOU REALLY HEAR IT!
mdrummer01

Showing 4 responses by mapman

mapman's avatar
mapman
22,638 posts
 
"While I'm at it, are there other recordings, say, in the female singer/songwriter genre with inherently excessive sibilance?"

The short answer is "yes" I believe.

Sibilence can be a natural phenomenon that gets captured in the recording.

It can also be artificially introduced during playback, in particular during vinyl playback when say a stylus is worn and/or when a cartridge is misaligned.

Otherwise, based on my own experience, properly functioning playback equipment of relatively good quality should not typically introduce additional sibilance artificially.
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,638 posts
 
And yes, I agree, sibilance, particularly the artificially created kind, is extremely annoying. When it occurs, I can no longer listen until the cause is corrected.
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,638 posts
 
."If something sounds wrong, something IS wrong..."

Good advice.

Also I like to follow "if it ain't broke, then don't fix it".
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,638 posts
 
I have zero tolerance for artificially produced sibilance in my system.

In almost all instances I've had sibilance issues over the years, it was related to either poorly configured phono setup or worn stylii on cartridges (these do need to be replaced periodically, remember, for optimal performance).

If its in the recording, then it is what it is. It will be there on a good system regardless of whether source is phono, digital or whatever and that's the way it should be.
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