By the way, did you ever end up getting the right spikes for your Thiels?
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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Yes I did thanks. I forget his name, but he’s the guy who’s got a large stockpile of Theil parts for sale. I also bought the male plastic inserts that are attached to the grill cloth frame and insert into the plastic female receptacles on the face of the cabinets. I don’t know the correct term for these parts, but they hold the grill cloth frame onto the cabinet. A number of mine had broken off. I also put new grill cloth on. They look great now and sound amazing. Thanks for asking gbmcleod! |
Skiznfliz - I had the same problem with my ears. After much frustration with local ENT doctors I went to a specialist at a Universty med school and he explained how damage at a specific frequency was compensated for by neighboring groups of hair cells, causing frequency-specific buzzing. With me it was only in one ear so I could diagnose it by facing backwards to switch speakers, moving the speakers etc and noting that the problem persisted in the one ear. Low volume and rest made it much better. I have also had the issues described by OP, caused by the system and not my ears. Can’t add much re that to the comments already here, but I solved it by treating first reflection points with pillows, angling the speakers away, and changing my seating position to be more near field. In OPs case, I would guess speaker- room interaction. It was extremely frustrating but these steps made a huge difference and I love the music now. |
+2 @audphile1 , In my system, to my ears, silver was brighter and harsher. I use all copper cables and with a resolving system that is important.
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