Cary SLP98 Tube Question

I had an SLP98 and I agree with you it can have that tendancy. You must have good speakers - many of them will mask sibilance. A friend of mine also had a Cary SLI80 and ended up having to get rid of it due to sibilance and a general projection of the upper mids that annoyed him (the two effects are linked in our opinion). He tried MANY tubes but it just never quite went away.

Also, I don't consider brightness to be the same as sibilance. Brightness is curable in many cases but sibiliance can be stubborn. Brightness is a higher frequency issue than sibilance is.

Arthur

Thank you for the thoughtful replies -- I do appreciate them.

The rest of my system includes: B&W n802, Bryston 14bsst, and a Myryad mc100 cd player. My listening room is treated with a number of realtraps & rpg skylines. I have addressed the first reflection points as well.

I know that many feel the B&Ws to be bright, however to my ear the system leans toward warmth. They are definitely revealing speakers though.

I have played with the toe-in a bit and it helped some. I've also tried different interconnects with some success.

I hope I'm not giving the impression that I think the Cary is unlistenable. On well recorded material, it sounds quite wonderful. I had hoped that it would be more forgiving of poorly recorded cds.

I would like to try another source before I decide the fate of the Cary. Perhaps its just revealing the shortcomings of an aging cd player.

Regards,
Greg

Check the filament voltage. Possibly it is not set correctly.

The Cary SLP 98L F-1 in my system sounds tremendous without a trace of sibilance whether using an Audio Aero CD 24/192 or a simple Music Hall CD 25 into MG 20R or Totem Arros. I have used Sovtek and China 6sN7's without a problem but got MAJOR improvement with NOS Sylvania 6SN7 GTB from the '60.

I found the stock tubes a bit brittle. Sylvania NOS was the cure. Very nice!! Note: You only need to replace the 2 front tubes with NOS.