Is it me or new audio gear is too perfect and give ear fatigue?

So much to unpack here, but i think you got several useful replies.

One i have not yet seen (but no doubt i skipped that reply!) is,"if you think your old Yamaha is so sweet, why not just keep it? Its free..."

Now, is much new gear bright and/or harsh (not the same thing!)? And is it too perfect (***certainly*** not the same thing).

If it were perfect, on great recordings it would vanish and the band would seem to appear, on on bad recordings they would sound reliably, well, bad. So unless you expect your stuff to make up for crap recordings, let’s assume nastly sounding stuff is not perfect. We honestly don’t know why not all data correlates.

Atmosphere hit on one of the key things - there are two classes of distortions. Musical ones that are musically related ("consonant") and nastly, a-musical ones that your brain says "where the F did that come from?" ("dissonant"). We can tolerate, and sometimes ENJOY large amounts of musical distortion. Example A: tubes. We hear and cringe from even small amounts of dissonant distortion: example B: bad digital, many cheap solid state amps, esepcially modern ones with SPMSs.

I will also report that many components are in fact bright and measure so. I can only speculate that they a) jump out in demos as "crisper" (the puppy that runs up to you rather than sitting in the corner of the cage) to they make up for many middle age+ men’s high frequency hearing loss. If like me, you still hear 20 khz, they sound bright, mostly because the ARE bright. I wont name names since that generates a flame war. Mostly speakers and moving coil cartridges.

Its why we must listen. And not do quick A-Bs but extended listening (yea, blind if you can pull it off, its not easy).

G

I have not had any ear fatigue with higher frequencies but have had issues with lower frequencies. When adding sub woofers to a system I would get ear pressure and fatigue until I was able to dial in the subs to blend in perfectly with the stand mount speakers and disappear.

in my experience, harsh or bright systems are the result of:

1. noisy power supply

2. noisy networks (for digital)

The solutions are:

1. A mains power conditioner (PSM 156 is a great option) or mains regenerator if affordable.

2. An audiophile network switch (Bonn 8) with Linear Power Supply

3. Isolate the DAC from the network switch with a renderer (Antipodes EX)

4. Reclocking the digital signal (etherRegen)

5. Only use hard wired connections to

the DAC and avoid optical. 

5. Better power cables with after market fuses.

Ghod luck! 

....and clean the speaker cable contacts! 

"in my experience, harsh or bright systems are the result of:

1. noisy power supply

2. noisy networks (for digital)"

? Cut out digital and half your problems.