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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
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
Ding ding ding winner winner chicken dinner!  

Beautiful answer! This is what I was getting at above. Sibilance in and of itself is neutral and nothing to be battling with. Get your cymbals to ring and ting like actual cymbals and you will find your sibilance "problem" magically solved in the bargain.
ghdprentice
8,097 posts
 
Cymbals… really good point. I struggled with the sound of cymbals for years. I kept finding that the ting… and following ring was mostly distortion, and that when I got to a certain level suddenly they started sounding like brass… a very different sound. (I am not contradicting Millercarbon, but digging into the point from my perspective). I found that I had listened to so many concerts (amplified) and stereos that had treble actually being high frequency noise that mimicked the sound of cymbals, bells, tambourines, etc. I actually though that was accurate sound reproduction. So each time I made a change that improved treble it got quieter and less pronounced… but it also took on the rich multifrequency tone with the true harmonics of brass. I had to go out and listen to unamplified cymbals to be sure that my system wasn’t just tilted too far to the warm side. Anyway, back to sibilants, I think that is right, if you have cymbals sounding like brass then the sibilants will take care of themselves.
bpoletti
1,566 posts
 
@blueranger 

Are you SURE is sibilance?  You haven't described the rest of your system.

There are a LOT of sources for annoying HF.  Speaker breakup, a crossover component gone bad, a tweeter issue, a metal driver starting to flex. 

Amp, preamp and phono stages can be sources of sibilance.  Lot 'o things can push electronics in the wrong direction.  Sometimes computers, their power supplies or switching power supplies can inject noise into the signal that can manifest themselves into HF noise.   

You might have addressed the phono source side, but there are a lot of other components that could be contributing.  
pedroeb
493 posts
 
I found a fix that has massively improved the clarity of my hearing, be it live or recorded.

The hairs in the outer canals of my ears were the culprits as they are long, thick and rigid. Normally hairs are unlikely to have any impact when they are short, thin, soft and flexible. In my case they were having a negative impact on what I was hearing. Probably it can be likened to having sound bounce though many layers of hair combs.

I should mention I have no idea if I am the odd one out or in the minority as I don't go around looking into people's ears!

The solution is to keep them short so there is a clear pathway to my eardrum.

They weren't so long as to be protruding from my ears, so it doesn't have anything to do with vanity.

blueranger's avatar
blueranger OP
719 posts
 
Great answers from everybody. Thanks. I just need to sit back and enjoy the music. Sibilance is only audible on a few of my records. I just wanted to tweak and optimize cartridge setup and that would hopefully increase fidelity over the range of my records. I must say the adjustments have been beneficial. 
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