1. Home
  2. speakers
  3. 198456-115932

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

I sometimes get a harsh glare or slightly raspy sound on female vocal lines when they sing loud, high pitched notes.  It’s hard to explain the sound exactly, but if you’ve ever experienced it, you’ll know what I’m speaking of.  Two examples are Norah Jones, Don’t Know Why at 1:57 with line  “You’ll be ON my mind”.   The other is Michael Bluble’s Quando, Quando, Quando featuring Nelly Furtardo.  Her line “I can’t wait a moment more, Tell me quando, quando, quando” at 1:53 is another good example.  This happens at moderate to fairly loud volume levels. 

Trying to determine if it’s coming from the midrange section or quasi ribbon tweeter, I’ve disconnected the speaker jumpers from one while keeping the other jumped and found it occurs in both the midrange and the tweeters.  I’ve also swapped out two other DACs and have bypassed the preamp by going directly to the amp from the DACS, but it makes no difference.  It doesn’t sound like clipping distortion or typical speaker breakup.  I’ve even inserted 1 ohm resistors on the Magnepans  and while it reduces it a bit, it’s still there.  I can also hear it to a somewhat lesser degree on my old Theil 1.5s and KEF KS50s at fairly loud, but not crazy volume levels.  Both of those speakers are driven with 400 watt @ 4 Ohms and a 300 watt @ 4 Ohms amps respectively.  I can’t imagine that I’m clipping the amps.

Does anyone else have this occur on their systems?  Any ideas on what’s going on here?

My system is Magnepan 3.7x speakers, PS Audio Airlens, Stellar Gold DAC, PMG Signature preamp & BHK 250 amp, streaming Tidal. 

stevehardy1
davidchampa's avatar
davidchampa
24 posts
 

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.

stevehardy1 OP
127 posts
 

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.  

salc
46 posts
 

I have Maggies, and run them without attenuators.  I found Cables have a huge impact on them from interconnects, speaker and power.  For example switching away from the Blizzard power cord that tends to have a lot of energy on my power conditioner to a more softer neutral cable completely removes that pitch and still maintained extension.  same with interconnect switching from cardas cygnus to reflection same result.    Also IMO paring equipment that leans slightly on the warm side worked best for me.   As some have noted it could be the recording, you may be adjusting for those recordings and dampening down your transparency and sparkle.  Happy tweaking.

jfrmusic
407 posts
 

This is one of the reasons I love my Harbeth C7. The reproduction of the human voice is outstanding and natural. The best I’ve heard. All of the recordings you mentioned sound natural and live. I never sense any of what you are hearing. No sibilance or glare.q

avanti1960
1,745 posts
 

@stevehardy1 

Check the recordings with a decent set of headphones- it will take your speakers, room and amplifier out of the equation.  

If it the glare is still there, then it could be your source and cables- try different sources.  

I have the Norah Jones SACD and do not hear the glare you are mentioning- the vocals get louder but do not distort in any way.  

More to discover