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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
deep_333
2,420 posts
 

Mmhm, and Taylor Swift is a "MEGA STAR" who boosts local economies when she's on tour...but, her music is very lackluster, kinda sucks, silly stuff..

 

Btw, it’s worth noting (or maybe not for some) that Norah was only 22 when she released Come Away With Me which is multi-platinum, did well at the 2003 Garrmy’s and is one of the 21st century’s best selling studio albums.

Not bad right out of the gate.

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
7,826 posts
 

@macg19 speaking of female singers…Eva Cassidy is in another league altogether.
 

Btw, it’s worth noting (or maybe not for some) that Norah was only 22 when she released Come Away With Me


No it’s not.
There are thousands of Norahs out there and they are playing bar and smorgasbord gigs. The difference between them and Norah Jones is their father isn’t Ravi Shankar. 
 

But I digress this isn’t relevant to this thread 

steakster
2,165 posts
 

🤔     Hmmm.

- - - 

After a copious number of playbacks on the analytical studio monitors and state-of-the-art headphones, the distortion on the recording was missed by:

- the recording artist

- the professional recording engineer

- the professional mastering engineer

- et al

- - - 

Nope.  😉  Look elsewhere in the playback system.

stevehardy1 OP
120 posts
 

After a copious number of playbacks on the analytical studio monitors and state-of-the-art headphones, the distortion on the recording was missed by:

I started this thread and if you read my initial post, the word "distortion" was never used.  I described a glare or harshness on specific passages. 

macg19
1,320 posts
 

@audphile1 ​​​​@deep_333 Exactly why I wrote "maybe not for some", thanks for commenting as expected.

Eva Cassidy - another league, one of my favorites.

Taylor Swift is a great promotor and business woman, who I find really annoying to listen to.  

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