So Much "Harshness"

"Lower resolution"! You are about to be drummed out of the corp! Tar, feathers, rail and a couple of drummers please!

How about real resolution, not just an enhanced sense of resolution by the manipulating rise/fall times, increaed HF response, etc, which is so often peddled as 'high' resolution.

As a pratical matter I think a lot of the harshness of which folks complain is just the result of equipment designed to 'sound like' they have the ultimate resolution just by enhancing existing information. They become additive, certainly not neutral, and by doing so, especially when piggybacked with other similar components and speakers they become subtractive (harsh).

I always chuckle when I read in a review or some user indorsement for example, someone saying he was able to hear detail in a recording that he had never heard before. My typical initial reaction is that this occurred because he had never listened as closely before, or that his previous equipment was seriously defective, or, rarely perhaps, that he has seriously critical listening skills and not only hears these things but knows to what they can be attributed.

Recordings come in all kinds of formats, with inherrent problems, but to come up with a system that allowed you to hear all of them (recordings) without any sounding harsh you would lose what the good/great ones add to our hobby interest, if not the music itself.

Yes, there is plenty of 'enhanced' resolution out there. Earlier increases in my system's resolution were often accompanied by increased low level detail (the black background thing) accompanied by increasing levels of 'harshness'. Eventually, I got sick and tired of this kind of resolution and decided to go in the refinement direction. In my system this has been marked by more neutral tonality, increased harmonic development and the sense of real performers in room soundstaging,imaging). 'Real resolution' requires much time and effort.

Just found this thread - lots of interesting opinions here, and here are mine, for what they are worth. I think the OP is quite close to the answers. Certainly many recordings, especially those of the last 25 years or so since the advent of digital recording, are mixed horribly, sounding nothing like the original space in which they were recorded, and the vast majority of the time being much brighter and harsher. The digital/analog thing does have much to do with it - not only in the playback, but even more importantly in the original recording/mixing process. The distortions inherent in the analog medium, though they are greater, are much less musically objectionable than those inherent in the digital medium, which occur at higher frequencies. This very much contributes to the "harshness" many complain of. No one's system, no matter how good it is, can "fix" a poor recording/mixing job. I would argue that there is a good reason many people believe that the best sounding orchestral recordings, for one example, were those made in the 50's and early 60's with just a couple of mikes hung either far out into the hall or far above the orchestra, in the case of Mercury. There is very little mixing on these recordings in comparison to what happens today.

Another factor is the equipment - certainly transistors are normally much brighter sounding than tubes, though some of today's tube amp makers are going for a brighter, more powerful, transistor-like sound. Some of these sound harsh to my ears, unlike the older tube amps I have heard. I also personally prefer the sound of the low wattage amp/high efficiency speaker combo to the reverse, though the reverse is much more common now.

It also has to do with the individual's musical tastes - those who listen almost exclusively to electronically produced music are not the ones generally complaining of harshness, in my experience. Rock concerts today are performed at insane volumes, with especially the bass greatly distorted by gigantic subwoofers, and many young people today think that all music is supposed to sound like that, and build systems to suit that taste. Many such people simply play their systems too loudly most of the time, trying to recreate this over-amplified sound. Most movie theaters do the same thing.

The greatly compressed MP3 files also are much brighter and harsher than other formats, and many young people are becoming used to this sound as well.

Power supply has a little bit to do with it as well, though I personally think this is the least of the reasons. In a recent experiment at home in my system, a power conditioner made only a very slight improvement to my CD player, and sounded absolutely awful with my vinyl set-up.

Please bear in mind that the above comments are generalizations, there are always exceptions. There are many different tastes out there, and there is equipment out there to realize pretty much anyone's personal taste. For those of you that love to listen to metal with a 500 watt amp and very low efficiency speakers as loud as you can crank it, more power to you! The most important thing is that we all enjoy what we are hearing.

I have some HEXFRED bridge rectifiers going in my Cayin phono stage power supply later this week. Bypassing electrolytics with film bypass caps next week. I have always heard power supplies are critical to maximizing performance, we shall see.