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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
toddalin's avatar
toddalin
658 posts
 

"Glare" and "Harshness" are forms of distortion if they are not actually intended for the media.  For that matter, any change from the media is a "distortion" so it comes down to terms..., and picking your poison.

BTW, you’ve demonstrated what I’ve been saying all along..., a $3 resistor in the crossover network can do more for the sound than a $$$ set of fancy cables or changing out a piece of equipment.

Where did you place the resistors in the schematic?  Did they go before or after the filter?

If the crossover is second order or higher and you place the resistor before the filter, it will not change the impedance seen so the slopes remain similar, but attenuated.

If the resistor went after the filter (before driver), you’ve added impedance and changed the slopes slightly..

stevehardy1 OP
120 posts
 

I didn’t touch the actual crossovers.  The Magnepan 3.7x (factory tweaked 3.7i) has 2 solid metal jumpers on the rear panel.  One for the quasi ribbon tweeter and one for the midrange panel.  To attenuate either one, you simply replace the jumper with a resistor (value of your choice), although the common favorites I’ve seen used are between .75 Ohms thru 1.5 Ohms.  I’m currently using .91 Ohms on the tweeter and .75 Ohms on the mids.  I’m going to experiment with some different values from .5 Ohms thru 1.2 Ohms to find the best balance...reduce the glare without rolling off too much high end.    

Each tweeter and mid panel have their own dedicated fuse, so removing the tweeter fuse allowed me to hear how much glare was also coming through the upper mids.

toddalin's avatar
toddalin
658 posts
 

In that case, they would have in all probability put it before the filter (cap/coil) so as not to affect the crossover slopes. yes

campoly's avatar
campoly
133 posts
 

I have MAGNEPAN 2.7i in an acoustically treated room and I don’t hear any glare or harshness in these two examples. Come to think of it, i don’t hear much glare or harshness in this room anyway. 

deep_333
2,420 posts
 

Do you have a dac with some peq (rme, whatever)...start with some low q dips in the 2 to 8k region. Refine with higher q, center point, etc.

It will usually fix it. If you're a non peq purist guy....well, you could try some other things.

Lil issues with gain staging, etc can pop up as glare. Do you have a streamer dac pre power amp all in one box like a...Yamaha R-N2000A or something? Hook it up. If it went away, the factory turn key tuning of it all was the right fit for you. (Mix and match great chef in the kitchen, you were not).

Assuming you have some competent treatments and setup, last resort, start modding the speaker crossover or go active crossover...or sell the speaker and move on.

 

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