Do You Ever Get Glare/Raspy Sound on High Pitched Female Vocal Lines?

@stevehardy1 

this issue is most likely caused by speakers positioned too far apart from each other and how that placement interacts with your room acoustics. This was the reason in my system. It impacted vocals and instruments that have major presence in that particular frequency range…saxophone, trumpet, piano.

Moving speakers closer together resolved it. Try a distance of 7ft measured center to center of speaker. Then work your way up with gradual changes spreading them further apart until you hit good balance of image precision and soundstage width  

It’s important to toe the speakers in just enough to minimize side wall reflection. Ideally treat the first reflection points. 
 

Other culprits I’ve seen contribute to this issue are cables and tubes. And of course equipment. 

@stevehardy1 

You’re gonna drive yourself crazy. I know being I just went through the same situation, even with the same songs. It started with Nora Jones and slowly went to anything in that freq range. 
I went through (4) Streamers, replaced my DAC, had my speakers checked by the manufacture, swapped out my COAXIAL & Interconnect cables from Silver to Copper, everything you could imagine with my system. Then the issue started to arise just listening to the TV through the sound bar, I’m asking everyone in the room if it sounds raspy, everyone’s looking at me like I’m nuts. This went on for weeks till I finally decided to swallow my pride and get my ears checked.

Yep, turned out it was me, my ears from the years of enjoying this hobby to it’s fullest, as well as yard equipment, the occasional concert, etc.. Apparently some of the small hairs in my inner ear canal were starting to show signs of damage and were acting up when I’d hear frequencies starting around 800 hz to about 1.5khz.

If I were you I’d do two things, First, give your ears a break for a week to two, means back away from listening, may help.

Second, get your ears checked, you may be surprised what they come up with.

I now have a R2R DAC as well as hearing aids I can EQ through the included app and music has never sounded better.

Pay attention to the signs esp, if it progresses . If you been into this hobby for a long time, it’s probably not just your system   

+1 @erik_squires 

It seems to me that it’s most likely a room interaction - either an excitation or reflection. You could explore this by moving some sofa cushions first behind the Maggie’s and then on the side walls in front of the plane of the speakers to see if it mutes the irritant frequencies. 

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

I have chased that harshness on both the Norah Jones track and the Eva Cassidy’s Live at Blues Alley, swapping components in and out, and I think it is a combination of things. In both cases I think the singers are overloading the mikes, so it is baked into the recording. I hear it on two different systems in two different rooms. In addition, I think room acoustics can exacerbate it. The two changes I made that helped are DSP room correction (Dirac) and moving to an R2R DAC, which seems to help with these tracks as well as with poorly digitized tracks from analog masters.

Well since yesterday, I have swapped out DACs, gone direct from DAC to amp, bypassing my preamp, swapped out amps and repositioned the Maggies in various positions.  None of that has helped.  I've noticed this more since I replaced by BHK pre with the PMG Signature pre.  My hunch is that the new pre is so revealing that it exposes every wart.  I'll try some additional room treatments, although I have diffusion and absorption on the wall behind the speakers already.