[pbarata]

After living for almost 2 years with a Krell KAV-400xi, in a system using Lyngdorf CD-1 CD player, B&W 703 speakers and Nordost cabling, I'm a tad tired with the prominence on sibilant sounds (specially on feminine voices).

What should I do to fix this?

1. Change 400xi for a valve integrated (PrimaLuna Dialogue Two, etc.)?
2. Change speakers with a more relax and sweet sound like Sonus Faber or go for B&W 8 series?
3. Change Nordost with a more warm cabling (Van den Hul, Cardas, etc.)?
4. Add a new CD player, tube based, or a tube base DAC?
5. Just send to the waste basket all these bad recorded CDs with so much of “fsssssss” and “tssssssss” sounds (I'm talking about Norah Jones, Diana Krall, Eva Fitzgerald, etc.)?

[CJROSS]

Number 2 old chap. Dont faff around with cables to change frequency response of you system. Your problem IMHO is the speakers, I'd be inclined to try some top of the range standmounts ie 805S, SF Crem Aud Ms, MA PL100s, Neats ..... Dynaudio Special 25s, esp with that amp.

[sue_hall]

Hiya,

It's not the CD's.

as a first thing I'd try changing the cables. Nordusssst cables are known to be very bright and can sound really bad in the wrong system. The Krell / B&W combo is probably not the best match for them.

What to change to depends on your budget.

Van Den hull isn't that bad sounding, Cardas is good to.

If you really want to stretch the budget, IMHO the best most natural sounding cables are Kondo. I use the Kondo copper speaker cable / interconnects and will never change them. I tried alsort prior to that. Again IMHO the Kondo is the most natural sounding, non tizzy, musical cable I've heard. And the silver stuff is supposed to be even better.

The problem is they are not cheap, the copper speaker cable costing £150 per metre and the interconnects £400 per pair. the silver is much more expensive :-)

Rob

[CJROSS]

Try some Van Damme Blue 2x4.0mm2 speaker cable £3/m. And some Mark Grant stereo ICs £25 a pop. 2 very cheap ways to check if the Nordost is the culprit. Then change your speakers

[alexs2]

I use B&W 805s with Krell KMA 100s and a TAG processor.

Whilst I do have a few Nordost cables around,these are NOT a good match with any forward sounding system and will only exacerbate sibilance,although as CJROSS has suggested,the 805s are less forward than the 700 series.

I use Kimber and Crystal Cable for the main and headphone sytem.

[pbarata]

After talking to another Lyngdorf CD-1 owner, I was advised to change the default output gain from 0dB to -3dB or even lower.

The Lyngdorf CD-1 allows adjusting the output gain on both balanced outputs (XLR) and non-balanced (RCA), from -6.0db to -0.0dB, in 0.5dB steps.

At 0dB, output gain is maximum with 3.8 Volt RMS
At -3dB, output is 2.7 Vrms
At -6dB, output is 1.0 Vrms

Higher voltages allow improving the Signal/Noise ratio, but can be too much for the amplifier or pre-amplifier. Krell KAV-400xi accepts 3.8Vrms without any problem at its inputs (both XLR and RCA), apparently. In this case, adjusting the volume knob from 400xi to 10, produces enough sound pressure for a normal listening.

When lowering the output gain to 1.0V (-6dB), is necessary to increase the volume knob to at least 18 to get the same SPL. (Didn't use any SPL meter, but can do so).

However, for some reason, in my system, the sibilant of human voices become much more prominent at higher gain (0dB).

After some listening I've found that an output gain of -4.0dB, about 2.3V, is the best value for achieving softer sibilant sounds, but preserves a good sense of pace and dynamics.

[padi89]

Ah sibilance my pet hate Having been in a similar situation the only real significant improvement i got in this area was by changing my speakers and the same with headphones. I listen to rock mainly and many recordings are pretty poor, from my experience if hearing sibilance its on the track, it's just that some systems will reveal this more than others.The bigger problem is that if sibilance really bothers you then it will stand out and hit you more than others, meaning if one word is sibilant on a track it can be cringe inducing when it comes along.

[pbarata]

Originally Posted by padi89

(...)The bigger problem is that if sibilance really bothers you then it will stand out and hit you more than others, meaning if one word is sibilant on a track it can be cringe inducing when it comes along.

Like the damaged pixel on a LCD screen, I bet. Once you notice it you will always see it, rather then the big picture.

[padi89]

Originally Posted by pbarata

Like the damaged pixel on a LCD screen, I bet. Once you notice it you will always see it, rather then the big picture.

Pretty much so, once your sensitive to sibilance i think that's it. It doesn't really bother me in the car or on a cheap system for background music but if im sitting down only to listen to music it drives me nuts.I tried swapping various components and whilst initially you may think there is an improvement it's usually not enough to eliminate the problem, it's worth a try but i would only do it on demo.I gave room acoustics a play too but to no avail.For me the best option was to go with a more forgiving speaker but once again demo.