My battle with sibilance.

@rauliruegas, maybe you missed this but computerized impulse testing of older Watt/Puppies in the near field produced similar curves for each speaker that rose in the treble and bass leaving a depression centered at 4000 Hz. The Watt/Puppy had a reputation for being a very easy to get along with loudspeaker and put Wilson on the map. I suspect this was the reason why. You have not shown me any evidence to the contrary.

There are plenty of recordings with sibilance issues. While it is true that some systems are more resistant to sibilance than others there are some recordings where you just can not get away from it. If there is no circumstance under which you get some sibilance with female voice or violin your system has a problem, probably a curve similar to the Watt/Puppy's! Since I measured the Watt/Puppys even better technology has come along where you measure the speakers with a sine sweep in real time. Lots of fun. You can program the computer to do the sweep but I prefer playing the sweep on a CD leaving the computer totally free to measure. One warning. If you get into this you are going to drive everyone else in the house NUTS. This is best done while you are alone but you might want to do a gummy first that way it will just sound like a new Trent Reznor song:-)

Dear @mijostyn : You are biased on that frequency range were our ears are more sensitive and you said that Wilson on purpose did it " something " in its crossover as other speaker manufacturers and some recordings labels some times but all those just or did not happens in the past or does not happens today. No evidence at all.

After all the information that I read over my research about I don’t need your notch filter. My system handled really good sibilance, not that does not exist but it’s not a true problem.

In today re-issues as the Rickie Lee Jones " It’s like this " you can be aware how the recording engeneer/producer of that Sheridan LP was made it: putting up-front her voice and due the tone of her voice the recording makes a little or to much hot down there. In the first track when you listen the word " shake/shaking " I noted a little sibilance but a very high volume.

Anyway, you can follow with your biased subject, not me because exist hundreds of speakers with a different frequency signature " window ", thousands and thousands of LP/CD recorded in several different ways and with different frequency " window " and each one of us has too ears with different frequency " windows ". That’s all, each one of us try to fix each one of us " problems " in our room/systems. You pointed out several times how you try to fix it: manipulating the system frequency response.

An audio system is a chain of several links and each one has its own every kind of distortion levels that at the end is the system noise floor level and I think you could have a problem down there because your system sibilance " problem " and how you fix it when appears. Higher system noise floor makes sibilance more apparent, yes that noise at the end means distortion levels.

Through the years and with out really looking to improve my system noise floor level I did it when I change my tonearms internal wire cooper by silver wires, when I changed system cables for Analysis Plus silver/cooper, when I take out all the input fuses in the electronics, when I change the power electrical cable for silver cable, when I changed the fancy/boutique speaker crossover capacitors for Wima/Kemet ones, etc, etc.
The noise floor level in my room/system is extremely low and this helps a lot against sibilance goes down too.

R.

Raul, I did not start this thread. I was just responding to the OP trying to shed some light on the situation. I am not sibilance crazy. As far as Rickie Lee Jones goes, who I have seen in person twice "it's Like This" was recorded later in her career when her voice had lowered a bit. Listen to any of her first three albums particularly "Pirates" 

I have no idea what Wilson intended. All I can tell you is what I measured which matches up perfectly with the speaker's reputation. Obviously, you do not trust my measurements which s your prerogative. But, that is your problem not mine. 

I must be a very lucky guy. I hardly ever have to reach for my sibilance preset and I did not have to do near the amount of....stuff to my system to get it to my liking. I see you have this thing for silver wire. Impressive. 

Dear @mijostyn : ""  you do not trust my measurements..."""

No, I trust in your measurements there is nothing to makes me doubt about. It's your conclusion in where I disagree.

""  I must be a very lucky guy. I hardly ever have to reach for my sibilance prese....""

there is no lucky but learned knowledge levels through the years what permit your system to perform the way it does. Yes, sometimes by " accident " we discovered " something that helps the system to improve but still we " learned " with.

"" I did not start this thread. I was just responding to the OP trying to shed some light on the situation. I am not sibilance crazy.  ""

but even that the OP " fixed "/lower the sibilance level in his system you posted that what some were posted on the sibilance issue was more about distortion levels and not true sibilance problem because the OP achieved a lower sibilance level after he made it a check up to the cartridge/tyonearm overall set up and he found out was wrong and from there came those distortions that accentaed the sibilance issue.

R.

Mijo, Have you noticed that you’ve backed off your original claim that Wilson deliberately engineered a “Gundry Dip” into their speaker’s response (without saying which of their many very different speakers you were talking about).  And that along the way you’ve admitted that the only close to meaningful measure of speaker response has to be done in an anechoic chamber, which you probably did not use in making your own private assessment. No one is saying that a given speaker may not have a dip in its midrange response, due to any number of different factors. So we can let the subject die a natural death.