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Slight Hardness on LP's

Hello FriendsI'm very happy with my set up, but on some LP's, and maybe overall, I found the sound, a bit harsh, e.g one some live records, the clapping, of the audience, is not natural!!, but at the same time the Bass, is great!!, my phono stage, and preamp, and monoblocks are all solid stage!!, do you think, maybe to go with a "tube preamp", might solve this!!, or will it spoil the great bass!!, Friends I live down on the far south coast of Australia, my closest Hi-Fi shop is 3 hours drive, from me!!, Is there a tone control, unit out there, or will this, smudge the nice cymbals??Hoping someone out there, can help??, My System is bellow, thanks in advance!!Source: "Once Analog" TT, "Aust" made, mated with the "Wand Tonearm" New Zealand, made, with a Dynavector DV-20X2L low output cartridgePhono Stage: Vacume tube logic made in Switzerland (solid statePre Amp: P.S Audio, and Dac, in one unit!!Mono Blocks: "Channel Islands", which I love!!, they are rated approx 170 WPC per channel, maybe this might be the problem, as the speakers are rated at I think 98 ohms, too much power??, I think they were designed, for fewer watts??I don't know!!, someone told me you can never have too much power, regardless!!Speakers: Zu Soul's MK 2Cables: Telos speaker cables, PAD and Harmonic Tech interconnects, RCA's, from TT, to Phono Stage, RCA's from phono Stage, to Pre Amp, Balanced from pre to "Mono Blocks"Friends, I know, this a long question, but want to get everything right, as we all "Enjoy the Music" !!ManyThanksDavid SpryAustralia



128x128daveyonthecoast
gadios
94 posts
 
Some good ideas above to try before buying gear.

Unclear if this is a relatively new to you system or not?

Also what acoustic treatments do you use? 
Are you all copper in the interconnects and speaker cables?

Is it your ears changing -as in "the system was sounding fine
for months/years until recently"?  Or it has always sounded this 
way (harsh) sometimes and now it is time to do something about it?

memcdm
13 posts
 
Through the years I have found the sound quality of LPs to vary radically especially on rock music.  Back in the day, I had reportedly good quality turntables ... both belt drives with separate highend arms and a couple of Denon AC direct drives, one with a Magnapan arm, a Dynovector Ruby moving coil cartridge and a separate phono amp for that cartidge and some disks just sounded terrible. (For a long time I had 3 turntables. I am down to 2 now.)  If most of your LPs sound edgy I suspect something is a miss in your setup. Some cartridge / arm combinations just don't work.  A slightly worn stylus creates problems. The tiniest bit of lent causes midtracking. Static is an issue. With loud music and subs lack of enough turntable isolation can cause mistracking. 60 cycle hum can be a problem.  With a great recording, a great pressing, a perfect setup and superior LP components,   an LP can sound wonderful.  In the end, however, nothing can fix a bad recording or a badly pressed LP.  While the lowly CD format has it's own issues,  for me, it is much easier to live with in the long run.
 
 
davigio
5 posts
 
 Hi, David. As you have already been suggested by some fans, it is very important to register the LP and if we talk about pop-rock music, unfortunately, recordings are valid especially in the live versions are few. If you can detect with sound level meter and disk test would be ideal, if you can't, then you could try with recordings of some master discs. In Italy there is the "Fone 'Record", which makes excellent recordings with analog tube system, you can go to their site and check.
Greetings from Italy
Davide Giovanetti ...
gosta's avatar
gosta
839 posts
 
+1 onhwy61 

Good advice not to tune your system after bad recordings. Bad is bad.
 
Ben Webster - Live at the Renaissance
for reference acoustic live recording including applauses.

LOKI is a nice simple inexpensive tool for adjusting the sound when you want to listen to the bad. 
audiorusty
273 posts
 
I also agree with @onhwy61.

I suspect your source material. The stage microphones are designed to reject sound that doesn't originate directly in front of the mic and especially that which originates from the rear of the mic such as applause. Also proximity to the mic makes a big difference. The farther away you are from the mic the less sensitive it becomes and the less realistic the sounds that they pick up become. I am also pretty sure that separate mics are used to record the audience and have their own dedicated channels on the mixing console and even though these mics are aimed at the audience they will still be along distance from them and will still suffer from the proximity affect. Thirdly with with most of the applause being on dedicated channels on the recording I highly doubt that either the recoding engineer, the mixing engineer or the mastering engineer are spending much if any time making sure that these tracks sound realistic

Lastly the frequency range of hands clapping is going to be in the same range of the upper harmonics of a vocalists, your melody instruments and the fundamental and harmonic range of the cymbals especially the hi-hat, so any adjustment you make that affects the tone of the applause will also affect the tone of everything else in that frequency range.

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