I played the Nora Jones clip and I don't hear any glare or raspy sounds much like your experience with headphones. And I'm using silver cables by Black Cat.
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.
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Along the same note, here is a gifted female vocalist...her name is Lisa Gerrard...a friend of mine... https://youtu.be/ccj58UZoBQs?si=hRQDcm5lX2tsTbqs Y'all lads need some better taste in music man....An audiophile recording (Norah J Jjejejeje..) is not equal to a talented musician. @parkergetdean wrote
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Listened to the Norah track on tidal and qobuz. It’s the recording. Shouty in multiple places she just yells into the mic. Is it unlistenable ? No. I would definitely not tune a system to sound good on Norah Jones. |
Well that’s that then. Case closed. I’ll start re-tuning my system to the worlds most boring singer, Patrica Barber. Good pianist though. But on a slightly more serious note, I don’t think anyone (and def not me) was suggesting tuning a system to a single artist/track. I don’t even know how that is possible. Recordings hitting extremes can be quite useful for testing all aspects of the system and its interaction with the space. From unlistenable to listenable to @audphile1’s point. Whether you like the artist or not is irrelevant in this context. Circling back to vocal talent. Neither Patricia or Norah are in the same league as Ella. |
+1 One of THE greatest female vocalists of all time.
It seems her microphone technique is lacking, when not backing off the mic on her belt notes. The engineer should have used a bit more judicious compression on her vocal track. |
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