How do I smooth out violins?

Hi John! I'm doin' just fine, thanks...And after all the dough they spent, Dem Bums had better do fine too. It's been far too long since they've looked like championship material. How 'bout if you and I negotiate a trade right now here on Audiogon? You give me and the Dodgers Cole Hamels and I'll give you and the Phils Aaron Harang (LOL)

Otherwise, I sincerely hope you're feeling fit and all is well with your family too...And here's to looking forward to a stellar season for the both of us.

How about Hamels for Kemp?? ;)

That's actually a fairer deal than what I offered, but there's always Juan Uribe!

I find this whole discussion fascinating. I think many good points have been raised (by many posters).

I never find live strings harsh sounding even if I sit onstage with the players, so in my opinion the problem lies with the playback system and the distortions that it adds, that overlay (and color) the sound of the recording.

CD (it's 16 bit/44.1kHz resolution) does overlay string sound with a layer of digital grunge. SACD on the other hand, sounds noticeably cleaner and that's what why I prefer it for my most critical (string) listening.

With that said there are other (equally important) sources of distortion in your playback system that also overlay string sound with harsh sounding distortions (and many of these issues can be addressed).

Let me start by saying that your speakers are blameless. They were designed to reproduce orchestral strings and can do this well but only if fed a clean, undistorted signal.

Your overall system seems unbalanced.

The pre-amp and source are not in the same class of fidelity as your speakers and that's why the speakers are not reaching their full potential.

I like previous suggestions to upgrade the source and preamp.

For source I would recommend upgrading to one of the Marantz SACD models like the SA-8004 (or one of the Marantz Reference models).

Not only do these play the superior SACD format but the higher end Marantz models feature improved power supplies and critical components that raise the level of CD playback over the Marantz budget CD players. The Spendor SP1/2's deserve a better sounding source.

There have been many great pre-amp suggestions in previous posts. I would only add that I would be looking at a tubed, Class-A unit.

Speaking of Class-A...switching from Class AB to Class A amplification made a world of difference in my system in getting orchestral strings to sound right. The lack of crossover distortion and high order harmonics in a well implemented Class-A design results in much smoother and more realistic sounding strings.

Reference Stereophile's measurements of your amp's distortion spectrum (revealing extensive high order harmonic distortion, which result in a gritty quality over-laying orchestral string tone).

http://www.stereophile.com/content/mccormack-power-drive-dna-1-power-amplifier-1992-measurements-part-2

There are many different ways (at the source and pre-amp level) that you can address string tone in your system and a few smart upgrades will make a world of difference.

This post is to hopefully clarify my other post where I mentioned Cardas and Audioquest cables. By some of the responses by other posters, I don't feel I did a very good job at getting my point across. Here's something I should have said: In my opinion, you need to get your system sounding good, BEFORE you buy cables. If you've done a good job buying components you like, matched them to each other properly and to the room, It should sound good, even if you have basic, entry level cables, connecting everything. The problems start to arise when you are not happy with your system and you buy cables to fix it.

I'm not at all saying that cables don't make a difference or that you shouldn't use them to tune your system to your liking. Absolutely. Buy whichever cables you like. Its your money and your system and there's nothing wrong with picking cables that sound good to you. It would be foolish not to.

I hope I was able to clarify my comments. Sorry if I confused anyone.