Sibilance

"Sibilance can be from from jitter or digit er errors."


Not on analogue.

You had me at   Some recordings I hear it, sometimes I don’t

MC's comment above is a little cryptic to me. If you hear it on some recordings and not on others wouldn't that mean it is in the recording?  If it was something in your system wouldn't you hear it on nearly all recordings?  On the other hand what self respecting recording or mixing engineer would put out a product with such an obvious defect?  Maybe it's a stamping defect?  I've struggled with this problem for many years and I've recently made some changes that had some impact.  I've found that record cleanliness and turntable geometry tweaks have made a difference.  Sibilance is not completely gone but is way less irritating than it used to be.

I had a sibilance issue that was driving me MAD for close to a year.  I had my system sounding excellent (Innersound Eros stats and Innersound amps in those days).  SOUNDED MAGNIFICENT so I decided to make 2 upgrades (at the same time).   The bigger upgrade was replacing my Esoteric X03SE SACD Player with a new K03;  at the same time, I purchased Symposium Svelt Shelves to go under the speakers.

BOY, did I have sibilance, which I attributed to the new SACD player requiring break in;  also got it a new Shunyata $2,000 PC just in case that was giving me trouble.  More time for break in.  Making a very long story short; when I added the symposium svelt sheveles under the speakers, I did not realize I had to remove the metal feet under the speakers.  I had spend thousands to try to find/remove the sibilance.  Needles to say, once the feet were removed, it was heaven again.  

Ever consider......your room?

Of course you will notice at times....

And if you are streaming its worse.

Sometimes harsh high freq. are caused by mains pollution, which is in turn caused by RFI and switched-mode power supplies. Variations then are a result of variations in the mains. You may change the DAC and harshness disappears, but not necessary because the DAC sounds differently, just because its power supply is less prone to those distortions.
One solution that works in my setup is Audioplan PowerPlant 100S, which is just a 100W isolation transformer for my DAC. It won’t help with a poorly balanced, bright system, but if all you need is just some fine-tuning, it does the job. It has no effect on my server though, but works well if connected to the DAC ( Aqua la Voce). I’d say cotton highs become silky. And you need a resolving setup to hear the real difference.