End of a long quest to vanquish sibilance.

@audphile1

Thanks!

@asvjerry

Yes; the Silverlines sound fine. I don’t, at this point, see any justification in attributing fatigue or sibilance to them. I may look into replacing them, at some point, but for now, I’m more inclined to be guided by the "if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it" maxim. I’m more inclined to explore DACs as I’m pretty certain the Hegel integrated’s internal DAC can be bested by a separate DAC.

@iseland

Sure -- if you can afford it! Why not? That’s not my situation, though. Even if I had teh $, I don’t have the space!

@dweller

Yes; of course. I get that. But I was experiencing exaggerated sibilance, on all vocal CDs.

@steakster

Moving the coffee table is impractical simply due to the room and existing other furniture. Not an ideal situation but it’s what I have to work with.

@barts

Well, I’ve tried covering the coffee table’s glass top, slate hearth and glass-fronted fireplace insert with blankets and foam and heard no difference. I hate tipped up or otherwise fatiguing sound so if doing these things made a perceptible difference, I would surely do them! I have lots of glass and closing the lined drapes also makes no difference. I’ve been told that covering glass with most fabrics will not help much and this has certainly been my experience. If I had a dedicated room, I would try attaching some of the "tuning" devices sold by Synergistic Research to glass surfaces but my wife, understandably, is not open to this in the living room.

@roadcykler

I can’t argue with your logic. All I can report is that 1) having removed the pavers sibilance is gone and 2) with previous (less resolving) components and the same speakers, there was no sibilance.

@ltmandella 

While I've read about that scenario, I've never noticed it. 

"Well, I’ve tried covering the coffee table’s glass top, slate hearth and glass-fronted fireplace insert with blankets and foam and heard no difference. I hate tipped up or otherwise fatiguing sound so if doing these things made a perceptible difference, I would surely do them! I have lots of glass and closing the lined drapes also makes no difference. I’ve been told that covering glass with most fabrics will not help much and this has certainly been my experience. If I had a dedicated room, I would try attaching some of the "tuning" devices sold by Synergistic Research to glass surfaces but my wife, understandably, is not open to this in the living room."

Oh, they make a difference.  It is just small and you can't do any of these things in "real time" so that you can instantaneously go back and forth to actually "hear" the small differences.

I would bet that if you get an app for your phone that does frequency analysis, or a Real Time Analyzer, you could see the small differences and compare them side-by-side.

BTW, I have a glass coffee table and I put a black cloth over it both for projector and sound purposes.

https://youtu.be/axP5o643kfI

@toddalin

Oh, they make a difference. It is just small and you can’t do any of these things in "real time" so that you can instantaneously go back and forth to actually "hear" the small differences.

Sounds plausible.

BTW, I have a glass coffee table and I put a black cloth over it both for projector and sound purposes.

What type of fabric, exactly? Why choose black over any other color? 

Anything helps on glass but a heavier weave seems like it would be better.

Black matters not for sound but for video reflection from the projector screen. This is our everyday "TV" set.

Joking aside,  maybe I'm fortunate enough to have the space (and funds) enough to accommodate all the  equipment but I do have 3 different kind of speakers I play around with.  A pair of martin logan sequel II and dynaudio contour 60 and a pair of horns .

It all depends of the taste of the week,  jazz rock classical electronic ..

Btw I set my eyes on my next pair ( avantgarde colibrie) should arrive in about 8 weeks 😁