Listener fatigue

Maybe I've been lucky, but I haven't had problems with fatiguing components, but I have gotten serious listeners fatigue from excessively bright ICs, speaker cables, digital cables, and worn out tubes in my SF pre-amp. I use and like Synergistic Research ICs and cables and use them throughout my system, but they have models such as Looking-glass ICs and Signature #3 cables that simply do not work in my system (tube pre-amp w/ SS amp), and definitely produced a brightness that caused significant listeners fatigue.

Some power cords will do it also, but I don't specifically remember the ones I didn't like. Auditioning wires in YOUR SYSTEM is essential to avoid this and other problems IMO.

In addition to excess brightness causing fatigue, an overly detailed, thin, analytical presentation will promote fatigue for me, but then these characteristics are also often related to excess upper mid-range and treble energy or brightness too. Cheers. Craig.

Whenever I was troubled by this unpleasant symptom, the cause lay in a thinned out or overemphasized upper midrange or in the treble. Strange, too much bass energy is annoying and calls for immediate remedy, but a faulty voicing in the regions mentioned above, sort of creeps on you and gives you a headache. That's why I used to hate CDs, when they first came out. Just my 2cents.

I remember listening to Elton John records through entry-level Stax headphones back in 70's with just a midfi Marantz receiver. I could listen for hours on end with no fatigue. The exact same recordings in CD now give me a headache after 15 minutes, even with my reference front end and Sen 600's. I think the only thing I liked in the mid 80's (when CD's really began to replace LPs) was those wonderful (but expensive) Mobile Fidelity cassette tapes. I think bright sounding CD's drove many of us from the hobby in the 80's -- kinda like when they replaced my orignal Datsun '77 280Z sports car with a bloated detuned ugliness that didn't get better till the 90's/

It's ironic that the companies (Sony, Phillips) that almost wrecked hi end with those early awful-sounding CD's are now coming to the resuce with SACD. Thank God for SACD DSD recordings -- no more listener fatique. --Lorne

True, Lorne true!

Overemphasized treble has proven hard for me to listen to for long, but I associate listener fatigue most with edgier-than-natural transients etching instruments into their positions, _demanding_ attention from various positions in the soundstage all at once.

Overinvolvement, while exciting at first, becomes exhausting before long. I've noticed a fairly fine line between too much involvement and not enough, but I am personally happier falling asleep while listening than getting wound up, since I mainly listen for relaxation (even to rock). Uninvolvement does not induce relaxation, but neither is exhaustion relaxing.