Cures for Vocal Sibilance?

Digital emphasis is on some discs, and de-emphasis should be applied by the transport ( I think ) before the signal is sent on to the DAC in those cases. If for some reason it isn’t then you’ll hear a bright sibilance. It may be that the DAC actually does the de-emphasis. I have a digital in-out box that I think allows me to strip the emphasis info from the signal so the DAC doesn’t know to apply de-emphasis. When I do that, discs that have emphasis sound too bright and sibilant. So it’s possible that the new transport is not sending the de-emphasis signal to the DAC. Anybody who knows more about emphasis de-emphasis feel free to correct me.

According to this site the transport should flag that the signal has emphasis, and then the DAC sees that flag and applies de-emphasis. This doesn’t always work between transports and DACs. https://whitefiles.org/tec/pgs/h13e.htm

After reading your other thread I'm doubting my de-emphasis notion. It was the first thing that came to my mind based on my experiences. Trying a CDP using it's internal dac would be a good litmus test. If it still sounds sibilant then I think you could safely rule out the transport/DAC communication as the culprit.

@slaw 

So washing your ears out helps? I may have to try that. I have some tinnitus and it seems to get aggravated by loud listening sessions. I avoid them most of the time, but I got exposed to a lot louder than I usually play while listening to some speakers being demoed for me. It wasn't pleasant, and the ear ringing is still coming back down a couple days later.