My battle with sibilance.

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.

@lewm , Yes, that may have been a bit pretentious. However the response of the speaker being what it was does lead one to wonder. As I said before I doubt Wilson did things by mistake although it might have been an end they were happy with. Just by listening it is going to make a more natural sounding speaker at lower volumes and it may have been by listening that they arrived at this result. Wilson was a young company at the time and certainly did not have the resources they have now. 
As for the anechoic chamber, quite right. You can get a feel for a speaker's behavior doing near field measurements. The largest errors are going to be in the bass. I do believe there are now computer programs that with impulse testing can ignore reflections and give a pretty accurate curve without an anechoic chamber. I certainly do not have one.  

This was not my own idea. I had heard manufacturers did this for two reasons, to lower sibilance and to make the speaker more natural sounding at lower levels. Both are very true and can be easily demonstrated. 

@rauliruegas , Sibilance and distortion are two very different problems with different solutions. Distortion might sort of sound like sibilance but it is not.