My battle with sibilance.


At the minimum sibilance is annoying to me. Its only present on a small percentage of my records. However today I wanted to see if I could improve it. The song in question is Men at Work's "Down Under". The cartridge is an Ortofon Cadenza Bronze retipped by Soundsmith. I went through a lot of the protocols for abating annoying sibilance.
1.My anti skate was not optimally set so I thought and I adjusted to less using a dead spot on a test record. I know some people don't agree with this. I tried Soundsmiths method but until I see a video I won't understand it.
2. I adjusted my VTA to at least 20 degrees. I realized it was off. It was set at 12-15 degrees. I know the Shibata stylus is sensitive to VTA.
3. I checked the VTF and it was set at the manufacturers suggestion at 2.5 grams. Which is dead in the middle of 2.3 to 2.7. I adjusted to 2.62. A lot of people think the higher range is optimum.
3. I made sure my stylus was absolutely clean.
Guess what? After all this, the sibilance was less but still there. As a check I listened to the song in streaming and it was in the recording!!! However not as bad as my record before my TT adjustments. So I'm happy now my TT might sound better on other recordings. Anyway I hope my fellow members here have had some success on sibilance and maybe some will benefit from what I did.

128x128blueranger
True sibilance is caused because our ears are most sensitive at certain frequencies mainly between 3 and 4 kHz. Many recording studio's use a house curve with a BBC or Gundry dip which drops these frequencies a little to try and prevent sibilance in their recordings. Some recordings without this correction are going to sound harsh on any system. You can stop this entirely by EQing this frequency band down just a dB or two.
I keep such a curve handy in my presets to deal with this problem. Sibilance occurs with instruments and voices that have a lot of energy in this region. Female voices and violins are classic. If your system can make it through an early Ricky Lee Jones recording without slicing your throat you have the problem licked. The problem is if you depress that band too much the music will start to sound... I guess muffled would be the right term. So, there is a trade off. 
You will never stop sibilance by adjusting a cartridge, miss-tracking maybe. A cartridge can make sibilance worse by having a rise or peak in that region but it is upper midrange not treble. It is the highest frequencies that suffer with poor alignment and poor alignment does not increase high frequencies but decreases them and this is above 12kHz a full octave at the minimum above the problem. 
And if your system slices your throat. don't go running to Mijostyn.Seriously, Mijo, good point.  I never knew about the Gundry dip.
You did the right things.  Recordings are what they are.  Good quality digital helps establish a reference standard to help identify issues with tricky items like proper turntable setup