Harshness – What causes it? What relieves it?
- Thread starter caesar
- Start date
What do you think contributes to harshness ? hash equals noise. I think to assume components or speakers are the culprit is misleading. I didn't think my system was harsh, but some titles in classical go on the edge. (Mercury and RCA Living Stereo) for example. With Entreq, that is no longer the case. Signal plane noise also accentuates sibilance...again with Entreq it virtually disappears.
Your a joke. I feel sorry for people who follow your recommendations purchasing equipment from you...Next.....
I get it, but I guess I never looked at noise as something that creates harshness. To me I connect it with quieter backgrounds for a cleaner/clearer image. I wouldn't say for instance that more noise contributes to harshness.
Close micing tends to remove the environmental acoustics from the recording. In some cases this gives the recording what I call a "Hot" sound which others may call harshness. There are various strategies to restore a natural sound to a recording that is afflicted in this way.
One approach to controlling this Hot sound or if you will Harshness is to restore the effects of the environment acoustics using artificial reverb.
Another approach is to use more distant micing which requires a recording space with favorable acoustics.
Another approach is to use over-all micing to obtain a signal that is rich with environmental acoustical sounds and layer the close-miced track(s) onto it.
My speakers used to sometimes sound harsh and bright, but it wasn't the speaker's fault. For me, it turned out to be the quality of the supporting equipment and/or the source material. I think that some of today's speakers are so accurate, that any deficiency in the chain is exposed in all it's glory. Myself, I don't want one of those "musical" speakers that tone everything down, I want realistic.
Sure but you can make sound harsh in a great measuring room and all you'll need to do so is a wrong valued pad if speakers are the item in question. I appreciate your zeal for room correction. I recognize the positive contributions these instruments can bring but here's a FACT. A room can make a modest system sound much better but it evn that has limits. Big ones. If you don't know what these are, sorry man, I'm not doing your homework for you. You want to know, do some homework. It's a fantastic tool but it is never a cure all. DRC is not a cure all. Never was, never will be.
Yes, we can say that harshness is a kind of noise that makes music particularly unpleasant. High-end systems are sometimes a blend of high resolution and delicacy, and it is easy to disturb this equilibrium and the system becomes harsh. Many high-end systems sound harsh before warm-up - a system that sounds harsh does not sound powerful and most of the times lacks power.
Most audiophiles will agree that many first generation CD players sounded harsh, but however they measured pretty well according to accepted standards. A nice way to make a system sound harsh is replacing the cables with old Monstercable copper cables showing a greenish color under the transparent insulation. The previous considerations suggest me that although harshness can be due to frequency response, it is not the main cause in high-end systems. I have owned a Mark Levinson Audio Palette equalizer, and only extreme misuse could make my system sound really harsh. Surely all my limited experience and IMHO. YMMV!
Caesar,
Do you have any specific experience or setup to which this question is directed or is this another obtuse questionnaire?
Do you have any specific experience or setup to which this question is directed or is this another obtuse questionnaire?
No, the six little knobs were used just as electronic safe dials, connected through an umbilical cable to my safe. Much better than my previous one.
Attachments
Agreed. Otherwise it's not really high fidelity, it's whatever you think it should be. Which is ok, but I choose to pursue high fidelity.
Point me to any speaker, much less a passive one, that has distortion figures that are better than even good midi. Seriously. Not that I don't believe you, but I'd really like to hear that speaker.
Tim
I think others have already give you the various reasons.
I find if you use simple miking of live instruments and don't process it the result isn't so harsh and usually not bright (or not by much). By simple miking I mean a stereo pair and possibly a couple omni outriggers. Of course much recording is very close miked. It will be louder, brighter and brash. I think sometimes mic preamps also get overloaded by this. With some inexpensive preamps switching in 10 db of attentuation even if you didn't seem to need it will suddenly clean up the sound.
Then much processing of music has artifacts to coarsen the sound quality. Limiting being my most unfavorite. Plus like others have said, if anything in the signal path is on edge or not up to par it seems to get emphasized as it gets passed along. So it is a number of factors.
And as the counterpoint, as you surmise, simply miked at a distance recordings done with taste and good equipment don't sound so harsh.
Agreed, I just didn't want to make a blanket statement that spikes are a poor choice. The one place I think they are useful is on an equipment or speaker platform that is sitting on carpet, so it has a firm foundation. Then I would place a decoupling/isolation device between the platform and speaker or component.
Right! Coupling to the floor when there is carpet will provide a solid, unmovable surface to place a speaker or component on. Then a decoupling device between the platform and speaker/component. This way the isolation device can work properly, otherwise it will be a combination of carpet and isolation device working, which probably won't work as well.
The thing about spikes is they allow two way transfer of vibration. I thought they would be best on my concrete basement floor with carpet. Decoupling via stillpoint's ultra 5's made a big improvement. Even when you are on concrete, all the mechanicals and general vibrations still transfer into the concrete...and go back up the spike including the music induced vibrations...you don't want a vibration feedback loop so to speak, IMHO.
