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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.

blueranger
perkri
924 posts
 
I’m getting my Men at Work now. I need to hear this now :)

As an aside, I have used this test record with great success.

https://store.acousticsounds.com/d/95088/Tacet-Vinyl_Check-180_Gram_Vinyl_Record

Only one I’ve used, but have managed to solve the problem of the "is it me, or the recording..." question with this as I know the cartridge/arm is properly set up.
perkri
924 posts
 
Put it on. This is one of the few records that somehow survived in storage at my parents basement - I bought this when it first came out. 

Quite a "thin" sounding recording. Think I know why it survived. Must have left it in their basement because I didn't care for it. 

Plays as new :)
terry9
2,354 posts
 
I find that capacitors affect sibilance quite a lot. The better the cap, the less sibilance (in general). There is a cap thread concurrently.

Also, the stability of the phono stage can contribute IIRC.

Other aspects of setup you have already addressed - but you may find that setting VTA so that the tail of the cartridge is down improves things.

Good luck.
pedroeb
493 posts
 
This is probably totally off field. Although it could be similar.

In my case I found that a combination of certain close frequencies and intensities interacted to create a tinny sound. To give you an idea of the range, Kiki Dee in particular sounded dreadful.

Two solutions combined to fix the issue.

Firstly I worked on my speakers. Upgrading crossover components plus treating the internals to reduce reflections and adding sound absorption filling so contamination on the rearward movement of the cones was as reduce as far as possible. After all, inward movement of the cone is 50% of the sound.

Secondly I added Supertweeters.

wturkey's avatar
wturkey
853 posts
 
Perhaps try cleaning the record? At this time, I’m going through the pile o records here. The difference is not subtle. Even a very clean record, in appearance, sounds improved after the cleaning. Sometimes there is some nasty stuff on the records that takes a while to dislodge. 
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