Sibilance when playing canned music

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Acoustical ideas...

from me, a man who has zero experience with PA (although I use a pair for home audio)...
Strictly as a troubleshooting method, are any of your speakers horns (or waveguides)? If so, and the you can access the horn, try lining the horn with some acoustic foam. This will of course reduce the mids/highs but it also has the (desired) effect to reduce resonances or HOM that can create irritating sound.


Patent(s) exist on the above idea so not for commercial use. It'll probably look awful but might help you pinpoint the flaws in your system.


Getting hung up on quality of electronics and compression methods has some validity, but when your hardware quality is higher than (say) Pyle and your audio compression is > maybe 160Kbits/sec (mp3, not much different for other codecs), you are 90-95% close to perfection. IMO buying gear that is multiples of pro-sumer or all but the cheapest, probably doesn't buy you much more than bragging rights, perhaps slightly better parts and reliability, but often little if any measurable improvement in electronic performance. An old analogy is that either a Nissan or a Rolls will get you to your destination, and the Nissan might very well be more reliable, even though it lack walnut paneling, unicorn leather seats and a Jacuzzi in the rear :D



I'm just a consumer, but in my 58 years of life, it is rare that I've heard a "small" PA system that wasn't horribly loud, way too much mids/highs and generally sounded like $#!+. Mixing engineers and others in the sound biz don't help matters either; HF in hearing the first to go due to chronic loud noise, and boosting the highs to compensate may sound good to the engineer but definitely not to the audience, whose hearing may not have been corroded as badly.
 
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I'm just a consumer, but in my 58 years of life, it is rare that I've heard a "small" PA system that wasn't horribly loud, way too much mids/highs and generally sounded like $#!+. Mixing engineers and others in the sound biz don't help matters either; HF in hearing the first to go due to chronic loud noise, and boosting the highs to compensate may sound good to the engineer but definitely not to the audience, whose hearing may not have been corroded as badly.


this is some corrosive vitriol in a thread that is about ensuring the elimination of the very thing you take issue with...and makes false generalizations about a group of people... i'll take solace in the fact that after 30 plus years of as you put it, assailing people's hearing, my hearing is still good according to my audiologist!
hater's are everywhere, no wonder racism is so hard to combat!


and compression used in amplitude control is quite different than data compression in a digital format.
 
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An automobile isolator gadget shouldn't be needed to connect a sound card output to a PA system. ...... Same goes for a PC EQ. Most of them make sound quality worse in some ways. So does Windows Sound Engine when it resamples everything on the fly without telling you, hence use ASIO drivers when possible and configure Windows to leave the device alone.
+1000000000 this.
Install ASIO drivers, and make sure NO windows dsp/sound "improvement", surround or any other processing is activated
 
I assume you are taking the sound out of the headphone socket from the laptop since I haven't seen any mention of a dedicated sound card?

I too have a Lenovo laptop for work but periodically it decides to install / activate some Dolby Sound rubbish which utterly destroys the sound coming out of the headphones. It seems to attempt to create some extra stereo width and makes the upper midrange sound all nasty. Could this be what you have been experiencing?
 
Hey everyone, sorry for the long response. Midterm season hit and I had to hit the books.

After more fiddling I have got things sounding pretty reasonable. Damo's idea about the Dolby sound was on the nose. I didn't realize that the laptop had that but once I found it and turned it off the music sounded so much better. I'm not sure what the point of it is but it was really muddying the sound. So that made a big improvement.

I also was more intentional about directing the volunteers who help set up to make them neat and not leave the extra length in a pile under the table. I think that also helped. The last thing I want to try is using the USB input to see if it makes a difference.

Overall I think it was just the combination of a bunch of little things that slowly accumulated until they made a very noticeable difference. You all helped me chase the bugs down. I really appreciate it!

The isolator I was referring to was an Mpow ground loop isolator. The reason I was using it was because the computer charger was making noise, and it does not have enough battery life to not be plugged in. After I worked some other kinks out of the sound system I tried it again and I think it actually does get rid of the charger noise, though I think it cuts the lows a little. It was $10 and I was just curious. A real DI box might be in order though.
Here's the link if youre curious
Amazon.com: Mpow Ground Loop Noise Isolator for Car Audio/Home Stereo System with 3.5mm Audio Cable (Black): Patozon

Thanks a lot for the help!
 
Good, glad it was that partly causing it.

I too didnt realise I had it until one day I was music shopping and all of the new tracks I was listening to sounded blooming awful. It took a while to twig that it wasn't the tracks, or failing headphones, but instead the actual playback device so spent some time investigating and figured it out. Whoever thought that junk software was a good idea needs shooting.

You might find that it just activates itself again periodically which is what mine did, but it hasn't for a while which I think was fixed by completely uninstalling it from the computer.
 
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If it is using the windows media player, you will want to look at the “enhancements” (by right clicking), and make sure everything is turned off. Sounded pretty rough to me before I had done that.
An also search for how to improve audio playback and find more I’m sure.
I was pretty surprised at how many little things there are just within a laptop that can effect the sound.
 
The isolator I was referring to was an Mpow ground loop isolator. The reason I was using it was because the computer charger was making noise, and it does not have enough battery life to not be plugged in.
That is a common problem with older laptops, if the computer itself cannot be updated and using the USB connection isn't any better in terms of noise get a line level isolator like the Behringer HD400.
HD400 | DI Boxes | Signal Processors | Behringer | Categories | Music Tribe - Behringer)
 

I didn't look at this link before my last post and now realize it's the same type of device.. I though you were talking about an AC ground lift isolator.
These all include a isolation transformers of some type but this is one case where size and quality matters, any isolator will pass audio and eliminate noise but small cheap transformers will roll off high frequency response and saturate and distort at low frequencies. I own a few of these, an ART DTI as well as the Behringer HD400 and a couple different Radial single channel DIs. The JTI has a really nice Jensen transformer that is totally transparent and can handle lots of signal level, but it's not cheap and totally overkill for a line level problem like this. The Art DTI is the most money you need to spend IMO and the Behringer also works just fine for laptop isolation.
 
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