I found that in order to get sparkling treble without sounding harsh or sibilance, there is really no other ways other than using high end components such as good woofer, good tweeters, and good xover components such as high end resistors and capacitors. And of course the xover has to be designed right. High quality components allow you to tune your freq. response fairly flat to get sparkling treble without the bad stuffs. Also, higher order filters such as using 24db slope will allow you to tune the freq. response relatively flat without sounding harsh but high order filters do have their draw back. It can be done but one needs to know how to harmonize all of the components at your disposal and of course with a lot of money.
Let's say you're a really good designer but given really low end components, then even with good xover design, it's hard to get both - treble and without sibilance. Now you may resort to really high order filter, but then you may end up with maybe treble but it will sound dry and sterile so in the end you may get treble but it won't be sparkling.
Personally whenever I tune my speakers to give a little bit more treble sparkle, I always go back, since after awhile they just don't sound natural.
I fought for a long time with sibilants, I had no experience with measurements and I could not establish the cause of the problem with certainty, so I investigated following a path, comparing the listening sensation and the measurement from the listening point, I have a diary where I write down ** the listening sensations for each song and for each modification made.
I have a list of recordings each of which pwrmette to listen to different acoustic varibe instruments and recording techniques.
every time I make a change I re-listen to it through my preset list to check if the change is only an equalization that improves a poor recording and gets worse with another good recording, or it is a change that adds quality improves the resolution to all the recordings .
the verification is a long and delicate step to be repeated several times and continued for days even at different times and without haste.
for each listening of the same song I write / add to the previous notes the sensation, the modification only when the judgment of the listening sensation is confirmed after many plays on different days only after this process which lasts not less than 10 days or even more if I have doubts .
** the memory of a sensation is not reliable, the quality and quantity of certain perceived attributes last only a few seconds, after which you can easily deceive yourself unwittingly even on your own.
the graph that I add I don't remember where I got it but it corresponds to my experience, from the measurements I had a hump of some db at 3000 Hz.
by only attenuating the hump at 3000Hz the sibilants have attenuated a lot, I still haven't completely resolved but there are few recordings where I feel the defect that could be a recording defect and many recordings sound splendid.
attenuating frequencies above 7000 Hz the sound loses resolution and tends to be opaque.
the general trend of the frequency response is also important.
if I attenuate only from 7000Hz onwards the sibilant is even more evident and more annoying.
I have a list of recordings each of which pwrmette to listen to different acoustic varibe instruments and recording techniques.
every time I make a change I re-listen to it through my preset list to check if the change is only an equalization that improves a poor recording and gets worse with another good recording, or it is a change that adds quality improves the resolution to all the recordings .
the verification is a long and delicate step to be repeated several times and continued for days even at different times and without haste.
for each listening of the same song I write / add to the previous notes the sensation, the modification only when the judgment of the listening sensation is confirmed after many plays on different days only after this process which lasts not less than 10 days or even more if I have doubts .
** the memory of a sensation is not reliable, the quality and quantity of certain perceived attributes last only a few seconds, after which you can easily deceive yourself unwittingly even on your own.
the graph that I add I don't remember where I got it but it corresponds to my experience, from the measurements I had a hump of some db at 3000 Hz.
by only attenuating the hump at 3000Hz the sibilants have attenuated a lot, I still haven't completely resolved but there are few recordings where I feel the defect that could be a recording defect and many recordings sound splendid.
attenuating frequencies above 7000 Hz the sound loses resolution and tends to be opaque.
the general trend of the frequency response is also important.
if I attenuate only from 7000Hz onwards the sibilant is even more evident and more annoying.
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Yes I agree that component quality in the XO is pretty important . I hate sibilance to the max. My own findings is source itself is the most important, there after you make changes to the XO. Btw don't just look at caps, resistors are just as important. Goes without saying the amp itself has go to be a decent one for not it too will add siblance.
Totally. But you know it's a natural part of both speech and singing.
Wikipedia:
The problem is that it is exacerbated by distortion/resonances in drivers, xover -- actually, in any part of the record/reproduction chain. And it falls in a frequency range where most humans are pretty sensitive.
If you have a high performance system and get bothered by excessive sibilance in a recording, just try a simple 2-4 dB EQ cut 6~8kHz. It's often enough to bring the sibilance down to a level that's no longer annoying.
Of course, some recordings seem impossible to ameliorate. For example, much as I love her, many of Ella Fitzgerald's recordings are flawed by either overloaded mics or mic preamps (cutting heads??), with a kind of ringing sibilance that I've found impossible to eliminate. And it doesn't matter which medium -- LP, CD, SACD, you name it -- that noise is on every version. I sigh & try & ignore, switch it of or change the music when I tire.
(Kind of like the master tape bleed-through pre-echo that spoils the amazing Low Spark of High Heel Boys -- again in every version I've ever found of the original track.)
Gah, sorry for the duplication.
Boden,
In my mind and those of others who have independently corroborated, the Mundorf Supreme and EVO lines add a color saturation. It's not natural but it is not sibilant either. I'm afraid the best I can do is use a color analogy. Like Fuji film, seemed to accentuate color, but not with the distortion/sibilance or air sometimes associated with mediocre ribbons. It is quite euphonic, and it is not glaring either, but it was not what I wanted when I built my own high end monitors.
I use Clarity CMR instead, which sound completely truthful to how instruments sound. I think there's a good difference in those two brands, at the high end.
The Mundorf MKPs on the other hand are quite dark and good for mediocre metal tweeters.
My suggestion is to listen to the top end, recent Magicos, they love the brand and the EVO especially. The S1 Mk II is a good example of what I'm talking about.
I think we should also look at the B&W response as an example of possible similarities.
While the Magico/Scanspeak tweeter is glass smooth, the B&W is not, in fact I've seen the sonic signature copied by another vendor using an entirely different tweeter. They achieve "detail" by carefully selecting the peaks and valleys, so that the overall balance is just a little bright, but the ear pics up on accentuated bands as more revealing.
Again, I encourage you to listen to the top end B&W, who also BTW, uses Mundorf, and compare it to Magico. I'm not a fan boy of Magico either, btw. I just note their character as a useful foil.
While the Magico/Scanspeak tweeter is glass smooth, the B&W is not, in fact I've seen the sonic signature copied by another vendor using an entirely different tweeter. They achieve "detail" by carefully selecting the peaks and valleys, so that the overall balance is just a little bright, but the ear pics up on accentuated bands as more revealing.
Again, I encourage you to listen to the top end B&W, who also BTW, uses Mundorf, and compare it to Magico. I'm not a fan boy of Magico either, btw. I just note their character as a useful foil.
Again, I think the sparkle is probably best done by the cap, and perhaps a ribbon which adds enough 2nd order distortion, but a third take on more high end, without sibilance is Dali.
They simply shelve the tweeter up by 2 dB or so compared to the rest of the system, with a modest uptilt too. The effect is a speaker that has a lot of detail at low volume.
They simply shelve the tweeter up by 2 dB or so compared to the rest of the system, with a modest uptilt too. The effect is a speaker that has a lot of detail at low volume.
I do not want to sound too harsh, but the whole Mundorf etc capacitor thing looks like typical audio talk. I am not aware of the exclusive use of Mundorfs or other exotics at, let's say, NASA, or in medical or instrumental equipment.
It is ESR and nothing else: the rest is purely anecdotal. If there are clearly measurable differences, there is something wrong with the capacitor.
As for B& W, that is way too much honor. Since B& W have chosen the minimal component filter route, their speakers betray themselves as mediocre at best. Simply look at “heat maps” of B&W. Revel, Genelec, Kef and JBL show the way, not B& W.
It is ESR and nothing else: the rest is purely anecdotal. If there are clearly measurable differences, there is something wrong with the capacitor.
As for B& W, that is way too much honor. Since B& W have chosen the minimal component filter route, their speakers betray themselves as mediocre at best. Simply look at “heat maps” of B&W. Revel, Genelec, Kef and JBL show the way, not B& W.
It is called expectation bias. To my best of knowledge Floyd Toole and other serious audio researchers mention capacitors as sound modifying devices.
But hey, in the parallel universe of subjective audio, where conventional physics do not apply and only "experiences" count, anything goes. The rest of the world calls it "quackery".
But hey, in the parallel universe of subjective audio, where conventional physics do not apply and only "experiences" count, anything goes. The rest of the world calls it "quackery".
I think we should be very careful when discussing the Toole/Olive research, as we should with any other research for that mater. They have their limitations and only context of that research can provide the result we can use.
They've made a research and decided that most people in that conditions can or can not hear the difference. Here is one example how that could be wrong for a person that does not fit in "most".
Blind Listening Letters | Stereophile.com
They've made a research and decided that most people in that conditions can or can not hear the difference. Here is one example how that could be wrong for a person that does not fit in "most".
Blind Listening Letters | Stereophile.com
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For what its worth
Years ago I was developing a full range curved panel planer magnetic( multiple long rectangular flat sections). It was the size of the Quad stat and used significantly lighter diaphragm than typical planer magnetics.
Diaphragm was about 2 X mass of typical Stat but about 1/3 mass of most planers mags. The biggest issue ( aside of pathetic sensitivity) was tensioned film resonances in the 150-250 hz range. I worked on it for about a year and became quite sensitive the the sound of issues in that range.
Eventually I visited some audio dealer to hear a Quad for the first time. I was surprised to hear the same issue in the Quad. It was obvious to me.
I make no absolute claim about this experience. Perhaps I simply became so in tune to it that I was overly sensitive?
That "sound" sounds like , well, tensioned plastic ha
from my very limited experience, I find it still too much sibilant when this area is flat in the axis...
I don't know though if it's apply to ESLs where the spl loss with the distance seems not apply like with dynamic drivers ?
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