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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!
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Showing 3 responses by psacanli

psacanli
535 posts
 
Check the absolute polarity of your ac to start.
psacanli
535 posts
 
Ensure you have isolation & conditioning for your CD player.
Dedicated lines do nothing for those items.
psacanli
535 posts
 
Sibilance is "always" much more obvious when the system is not well set up overall, including AC conditioning, however-even in a perfectly set up system if the disc played is not in correct phase sibilance will be an issue. This is the reason I would no longer consider a system where I could not change the phase in the source(CD plyer) or preamp, preferably the pre.
Since records have the same phase problems I have a Spectral preamp which provides phase switching for any source-and does so in a completely transparent manner.
This phase problem will continue to be a factor for downloaded music so a great preamp with this feature will be worthwhile for a very long time to come for serious listeners-imho.
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