Excessive sibilance and edge....treat room?

"08-29-14: Csontos
I think you misunderstood me there. I gave a list of the opposite of 'soft'."

I'm pretty sure I didn't understand what you were saying. Is it that you think soft dome tweeters sound harsh and have a lot of sibilance, and that metal tweeters do not?

Okay, if anyone has something to learn in this hobby, it's definitely me! I would not consider soft dome tweeters to be harsh. Looks like there's a lack of communication here which could very well be attribute4d to me. Sibilance as I may erroneously understand it is a lack of transient precision or clarity. Hard domes or ribbons/planars are unforgiving toward the signal further up the chain, hence a tendency to slur HF transients resulting in sibilance. Soft domes tend to cover the sins of the aforementioned but incidentally fall by nature to the same/similar fate?

"Sibilance as I may erroneously understand it is a lack of transient precision or clarity."

Sibilance is a subjective term so it can vary a bit from person to person. I don't think your statement is wrong, just incomplete. Sibilance (vocal) is when there is an unnatural emphasis on certain sounds when spoken. Words that start off with letters like S, C, K, T are the most common to be effected by sibilance type of distortion. Most people describe the sibilance they hear as harshness that definitely is not natural sounding. If you were to take a recording of someones voice and play it on a system that you hear sibilance on and compare it to what the person actually sounds like in real life, you should not here sibilance. One thing to keep in mind is that sibilance can be caused by any number of things. Things like metal tweeters can enhance it, but sibilance can be on the recording itself. Given that, you can definitely hear it on "soft" sounding gear like tubes and speakers with soft tweeters. You almost have to deal with it on a case by case basis. That's what makes it so frustrating.

"Sibilance as I may erroneously understand it is a lack of transient precision or clarity."

Looking at your definition again, it may make more sense to not say a lack of precision or clarity, but too much precision or clarity. The result being unnatural.

Keep in mind, this is just the way I explain sibilance. No doubt, others will add more to it, and possibly disagree with me on some points. Its subjective.

I have a vague sense we're on the same page. Defining sibilance as too much precision or clarity seems a bit oxymoronic, though. How can you have too much? By saying HF are being stretched to sibilance with soft tweeters to me is more accurate since distortion is after all the result which is in the end a loss of original content/experience. You could say distortion is an addition to original content but still, I would not use terms that contradict that. I'm pretty sure I'm in agreement with the rest of your assessment.

"Defining sibilance as too much precision or clarity seems a bit oxymoronic, though. How can you have too much?"

Again, its a subjective term and not everyone will explain it the same way. But in the above case, a good example would be a microscope. Just as you would bring forth detail that you would not normally see with the naked eye, an audio system has the potential to reveal more detail than you would hear naturally. For example, most vocals are recorded with microphones that are very close to the singer. So in reality, unless someone is talking or singing directly into your ear, you have the potential to hear much more detail in the recorded voice than you would under normal conditions where the person would be much further away.

If you look at the playback side of the equation, the problem can be further enhanced by component choice. I've always felt that one of the reasons sibilance is so annoying on speakers that have metal tweeters, is the fact that there are no parts of our bodies that are made out of metal. Its very difficult to make a metal speaker driver have the timbrel accuracy needed to reproduce the human voice when the materials that we are made of are so vastly different than metal.

Keep in mind though, as I said before, I'm just giving a couple of examples based on my own subjective judgment and that the issue of sibilance is a much broader topic than I'm going over here.

"By saying HF are being stretched to sibilance with soft tweeters to me is more accurate since distortion is after all the result which is in the end a loss of original content/experience."

That's a very good example of how subjective this topic can be. When you say that high frequencies are stretched to sibilance with soft tweeters, I have a hard time visualizing what you are referring to. But that doesn't mean you're wrong. Its very difficult to describe in words how something sounds.