How to remove harshness from my digital gear

Personally, I have not found digital harshness to be a problem with most any digital gear I have acquired in recent years, even with Japanese brands like Marantz or Denon. Using a player takes some of the guesswork out but my opinion is that most cases of digital brightness or harshness these days is due to other factors, not the digital itself. DIfferent digital gear will sound different on a revealing system, but I have not heard any sound inherently bright or harsh in my system for many years. There has always been a way to make it work, usually having to do with synergy of gear overall and room acoustics. Nothing uniqque to digital there! Its just the details of setup that might be needed to make the digital sound good may not be the same as with phono, for example, unless both sources are put together in a manner where both tend to sound inherently similar to start with.

Most of the problem is related to the CD. Stock off the shelf CDs almost always sound harsh, tinny, thin, generic, boomy, grainy, two dimensional, distorted, uninvolving, boring and metallic.

Even with an analog front end, there is such a thing as a harsh cartridge. Analog or digital, start at the very source of the sound and go from there by isolating and substituting until you have identified the harsh contribution to your sound.

Enjoy the music.

Steve at Emperical Audio:

I know I have a great deal of ground loop hum (audible from the speakers at all times). How do i get rid of it?

Geoff - the CD sounds thin due to jitter from the badly formed pits. Rip the CD with dbpoweramp to .wave file and then rewrite onto a CDROM using a good writer and you will experience lower jitter. Reclock the CD transport and you will experience even lower jitter.

IME, its easier and less expensive to go the computer audio route to achieve lower jitter than CD players.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio