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

Ignore the cable dudes or suggestions it’s in the recording. @ghdprenticemashif and @erik_squires are on the right track (pun intended).

I experienced exactly the same issue with exactly the same artist (Nora Jones Come Away with Me (HiRes version, Qobuz) this afternoon playing around with speaker positioning and room treatments. Not the first time. I use this "induced distortion" as a quality metric. This is one of several reference tracks I use.

Moving the speakers too close OR too far from the front wall created the issue and somewhere in between made it go away. Distance between also matters.

Easy and free, start with speaker positioning. Don’t be afraid to ignore the norms or manufacturers recommendations.

The room is a bit more difficult a problem to mitigate.

PS. Another good test track for the same issue is Rachelle Ferrell "I Can Explain". Also good for imaging and bass response.

I tried 8 amps in 6 months and several of them produced this issue with high notes and inflections. A better amp fixed it.

My hunch is that the new pre is so revealing 

revealing is not the problem. Perhaps bad recording...

I tried 8 amps in 6 months and several of them produced this issue with high notes and inflections. A better amp fixed it.

Or masked it.

how do you mask a glaring, bright, high yet perfect note in a female vocal when it sounds like it's in your face? Mask is a really silly word here.