How do I smooth out violins?

Musicfile,

Good suggestions, but finances don't allow for replacing caps in the DNA and a tube pre...will have to go with just the pre for now.

Gentlemen, my two cents on this. Pretty much I agree with Frogman and Al. While they are correct that some digital recordings have gotten better, and there are even a few older ones that sound fine, it is a very sad fact that most of them are extremely over-miked and over-mixed, and just REALLY suck in general. I have plenty of first-hand experience of this, watching so-called "sound engineers" with absolutely no clue what they are doing. It is truly painful, and even infuriating. Almost no one seems to know how mikes should really be set up any more - they figure it's digital now, it's easy, it's just pushing buttons. Use as many mikes as possible, wherever we want, and then mix it to sound however the hell we want later. It is truly appalling for us musicians. They have especially lost the art, though, of doing sound at live concerts, but that's a whole other rant, though it is very much related to the non-thinking, non-listening approach that most of them have ever since digital recording was possible.

Sorry, but I happened to have an especially bad experience at tonight's show with the idiots who are the "sound guys". OK, I'm done ranting now.

Rok2id,
If you notice, there`re acutually a number of posts here advising the OP to be systematic in approaching this issue.As has been say repeatedly, be sure it is`nt a 'recording issue' before changing and swapping components blindly.Take one sensible step at a time.

Learsfool,
Your "rant" is fully understood,it is a shame these 'sound' engineers won`t rely more on their ears and simply listen.
Regards,

A suggestion...to not assume all tube preamps will resolve your issue. Some tube preamps are not that "tubey". In my experience, certain units from Audio Research and Counterpoint sound very revealing. They will probably still be an upgrade from NAD, but may not be what you are targeting - which sounds like more of the CJ, Quicksilver type of sound. Also, replacing your Audioquest with Cardas may help too.

I've said from the beginning in my first post that if the problem is equipment related that I would look first to the preamp. I stand by this recommendation. I think that its worth stating again, though, that you need to look for the RIGHT preamp, not a tube preamp. If the right preamp just happens to be tube based, that's the one I would get.

If you start with the intent to FIX a problem by throwing things like tubes, cables, AC products, etc.. into the equation, you will fail. Any time you don't use products as they were intended to be used, in context, you can't possibly expect them to do good in your system other than by luck or accident. Heres an example. A lot of people mention that you should switch from AQ to Cardas cables. Why? I have absolutely no idea. The right way to correct the problem you are having with regards to getting stringed instruments right has nothing to do with cables. In this case, cables can't fix the problem. If cables can't fix the problem, the only other thing you can try to do with them is cover the problem up. By installing Cardas cables in your system, you can hope that the cables will work in a selective fashion, targeting a frequency range that just happens to be a problem area in your system, and smooth the problem over for you; by design. Anyone who thinks something like that can work needs to give Cardas a call and run the idea by them. In all likelihood, they would tell you (while laughing), that would be a bad idea and that they design their cables to have a frequency response that is as flat as possible; just like everyone else does. I'm not saying here that cables don't sound different from each other; they do. The point I'm trying to make is that if you use cables to transfer the audio signal from component to component, you will probably be happy with them. If you get them for some other reason, you won't be happy.