Taming The Top End

[Mike]

https://www.psaudio.com/pauls-posts/taming-the-top-end/

Interesting article. Paul forgets the recording, room, power, cables and electronics!

The recording and room can play a bigger role than everything.

The way I see it, varying music genres have also had an impact. In classical, an extended top end is considered a positive. It’s often called “airy” with brilliant “extension” by reviewers. In rock or pop music, that same extended top end is called hell!

I have noticed a big push by electronics and speaker manufacturers to push the top end more and more and this is not a good thing for those not solely fastened in their classical listener chair.

In the Alan Shaw of Harbeth video, he discusses this very topic.

I often wonder why manufacturers have decided excessive extension in the top end is a good thing? Most digital combined with silver cables and rooms are already bright enough! Add in sibilant as heck recordings (use the de-esser engineers!) and all hell breaks loose.

A wave guide on the tweeter helps a lot too, but we don’t see that much. Other worldly materials like diamond also helps.

Again, extension is good for the classical music lover, not for those of us that listen to everything else. Thankfully there are some designers like Kevin Hayes at VAC, Alon at Magico and Alan Shaw at Harbeth who recognize the need for balance.


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[aKnyght]

wow... and i thought it was just me trying to get out of "high hell" -- pretty much every tweak i do is to tame the high end to get a richer, more balanced sound where the highs do not stomp on everything. NOS tubes, tinned-copper cables, etc.

[nonesup]

Well, in classical music a too bright top end makes the masses of violins very hard to hear

[jadedavid]

If you look at the audio response spectrum in your room as a graph, and you have a rising top end, there are two ways to address it.
1) try and reduce the top end or
2) bring up the bottom end.
Reducing reflections and toe in/out helps reduce the highs while speaker placement helps to boost the bottom. And or a combination of two.

[jdandy]

There is no doubt about it, the room is a speaker. Everything about a room, its dimensions and length/width/height ratio, openings, windows, hard floors, carpeted floors, furniture and placement, acoustic treatments, and more all play into what happens to sound waves as they propagate from a speaker's drivers. Added to this immensely complicated scenario is the placement of speakers in a room, and how large and small location adjustment can impact the low frequency loading of the space, as well as soundstage accuracy. As a third speaker, the room and its contents become part of the audible performance. Move anything in the room, including yourself, and the sound changes. High frequency energy bounces off hard surfaces, always out of time with the initial wave launches, causing nulls and/or peaks. Nulls can often give the impression there is more energy at certain frequencies due to the absence of supporting frequencies. Peaks draw our attention due to the added intensity of reflected energy that is time shifted and then combined with the original high frequency energy. Low frequencies can be equally problematic. The wave lengths are large, thus moving larger volumes of air. These low frequencies can congregate and reinforce their strength at areas of right angles such as corners, particularly corners behind the speakers. Phase relationships of these low frequency waves can null certain ranges and create exaggerated peaks in other ranges. Again, this is all being done by our third speaker, the room. Add something to the room, things change. Remove something from the room, things change. It's like a tone control.

It is a fine balancing act to manage a room's impact on the sound, and this chore almost always falls in the lap of system owners. Some are fortunate to have a dedicated listen space where control over contents and locations does not have to be compromised, while others must contend with managing shared spaces and delicate or contrasting notions of aesthetics that fail to allow full optimization. The room is a serious and often overlooked transducer. Audio enthusiasts tend to want to tweak gear and cables as a solution for audible anomalies, relocating speakers as a last ditch effort, and seldom give enough attention to that third speaker, the room. Granted, sometimes circumstances demand compromises. In fact, even the best of sound system setups have had compromises made to one extent or the other. The fun thing is that all of this is part and parcel of what our high-end audio hobby is all about, and it keeps us excited, amused, and entertained as we pursue the elusive audio nirvana.

[jadedavid]

There is no doubt about it, the room is a speaker. Everything about a room, its dimensions and length/width/height ratio, openings, windows, hard floors, carpeted floors, furniture and placement, acoustic treatments, and more all play into what happens to sound waves as they propagate from a speaker's drivers. Added to this immensely complicated scenario is the placement of speakers in a room, and how large and small location adjustment can impact the low frequency loading of the space, as well as soundstage accuracy. As a third speaker, the room and its contents become part of the audible performance. Move anything in the room, including yourself, and the sound changes. High frequency energy bounces off hard surfaces, always out of time with the initial wave launches, causing nulls and/or peaks. Nulls can often give the impression there is more energy at certain frequencies due to the absence of supporting frequencies. Peaks draw our attention due to the added intensity of reflected energy that is time shifted and then combined with the original high frequency energy. Low frequencies can be equally problematic. The wave lengths are large, thus moving larger volumes of air. These low frequencies can congregate and reinforce their strength at areas of right angles such as corners, particularly corners behind the speakers. Phase relationships of these low frequency waves can null certain ranges and create exaggerated peaks in other ranges. Again, this is all being done by our third speaker, the room. Add something to the room, things change. Remove something from the room, things change. It's like a tone control.

It is a fine balancing act to manage a room's impact on the sound, and this chore almost always falls in the lap of system owners. Some are fortunate to have a dedicated listen space where control over contents and locations does not have to be compromised, while others must contend with managing shared spaces and delicate or contrasting notions of aesthetics that fail to allow full optimization. The room is a serious and often overlooked transducer. Audio enthusiasts tend to want to tweak gear and cables as a solution for audible anomalies, relocating speakers as a last ditch effort, and seldom give enough attention to that third speaker, the room. Granted, sometimes circumstances demand compromises. In fact, even the best of sound system setups have had compromises made to one extent or the other. The fun thing is that all of this is part and parcel of what our high-end audio hobby is all about, and it keeps us excited, amused, and entertained as we pursue the elusive audio nirvana.

Thank you for saying so eloquently what I was trying to get across.

[dlb2]

Maybe if you have ear piercing highs that can't be tamed you have the wrong gear.

[Mechnutt]

I am very sensitive to top end. My listening room is wood floor and all windows. I had to use Duelund resistors in the tweeters in my Magnepans to tame it. I also picked gear like my Luxman DAC along with XLR's and USB cables that tame the high end. I am finally satisfied. Even my Bug Head music player has settings that can take the sting out of poorly recorded or bright music.

[Mike Lavigne]

I can tell you that room tuning turns a hard high frequency situation into space and scale. my room was always very live and retained energy, but until I controlled reflective hash those high frequencies would rear their ugly head from time to time. now I can sit back and enjoy the very extended high frequencies of the darTZeel amplifiers. and my Lamm ML3 tube amps and lended VAC Statement 450's are revealed as not as extended as the darts. prior to the room tuning, tube amps would be 'kinder' to high frequencies. basically limited bandwidth a bandaid on the real problem. I can see where people might prefer a tube amp simply because it's less demanding from a room and the effort to deal with reflective hash. and mostly it's not understood.

I've written many posts about my efforts on my room tuning.......and it was a huge effort. my speakers have lots of driver surface and can really move lots of air. the room tuning allows the speakers to breathe and also to push the SPL's when the music demands it. it's significant in the effort to have suspension of disbelief and feel the musical flow.

[Petro85]

hate to say it, and it will make Mike roll his eyes , Altec had it figured out 40 years ago in the model 19's add a mid high and high attenuator so you can control highs and of course honkiness of horns. specifically to your liking. my original xovers had a single attentuator and it helped but wasnt enough. i built basically a copy of model 19 1200hz xover with better caps and resistors, and lots of them to get the 2nd attenuator in there at the right frequencies. it changed my whole sound and now i can totally control the highs an mid highs to my liking.
old tech is still the best tech

[Mike Lavigne]

hate to say it, and it will make Mike roll his eyes , Altec had it figured out 40 years ago in the model 19's add a mid high and high attenuator so you can control highs and of course honkiness of horns. specifically to your liking. my original xovers had a single attentuator and it helped but wasnt enough. i built basically a copy of model 19 1200hz xover with better caps and resistors, and lots of them to get the 2nd attenuator in there at the right frequencies. it changed my whole sound and now i can totally control the highs an mid highs to my liking.
old tech is still the best tech

with all due respect, you are throwing away information if you don't first fix the room. cutting off high frequency information to eliminate uncomfortable highs is another band aid approach. so many times I've solved room or signal path issues, then another thing could be adjusted for more information.

[AJ Soundfield]

While there is an ounce of truth in all that, speakers, rooms, amps, system all contributing to top end woes, once that is all sorted, it becomes a fixed attribute. What isn't fixed, is the huge variability in recordings.
So a "polite" speaker with "polite" system in a moderately damped room sounds really good with bright to average recordings...and dead as a doornail with dullish ones.
Then a brightish speaker/system in a livelyish room takes that same dullish recording and makes it sound wonderful, much better than the other system...but throw on a bright track and all hell breaks loose.
Unless the system is on the fly variable, no one "setting" is going to work with all recordings.

[Petro85]

with all due respect, you are throwing away information if you don't first fix the room. cutting off high frequency information to eliminate uncomfortable highs is another band aid approach. so many times I've solved room or signal path issues, then another thing could be adjusted for more information.

yea i hear you, but i dont have room issues as i never had a dedicated room, i dont agree with acoustics(for me) because i have so much stuff in my room that there would be no way to adjust for everything. some stuff sucks in sound, some deflect. i have a lot of friends with dedicated rooms and they deal with issues i dont have or easily ignore.lol. im sure the 6 acoustic guitars hanging on the walls around my speakers do something to the sound. but i dont know what. i do know i have incredible mids, smooth highs and vocals that rival anything ive heard. and ive heard alot. my biggest issue is low end. ive too much bass for my small room. and too tight of walls around the woofers.
as AJ mentions above there are still recordings that nothing can fix.

[Mike Lavigne]

yea i hear you, but i dont have room issues as i never had a dedicated room, i dont agree with acoustics(for me) because i have so much stuff in my room that there would be no way to adjust for everything. some stuff sucks in sound, some deflect. i have a lot of friends with dedicated rooms and they deal with issues i dont have or easily ignore.lol. im sure the 6 acoustic guitars hanging on the walls around my speakers do something to the sound. but i dont know what. i do know i have incredible mids, smooth highs and vocals that rival anything ive heard. and ive heard alot. my biggest issue is low end. ive too much bass for my small room. and too tight of walls around the woofers.
as AJ mentions above there are still recordings that nothing can fix.

living rooms, or rather 'lived in rooms' with lots of stuff can sound excellent, either by plan or accident. you cannot judge an acoustic result by looking. but if you find you have to attenuate the tweeter excessively then maybe there are issues you can creatively solve and still retain more 'friendly' high frequency energy.

after taking more than 10 years getting my own dedicated room under control I'm the poster boy for harsh sounding dedicated rooms. OTOH there is more ultimate up side to whole frequency range optimization in a dedicated room. but it takes much more work than a lived in room with naturally occurring acoustics.

until you fix the room, you have no idea what is the recording, and what is the room, or what is the signal path, as far as what to fix or even if fixing is needed. assuming it's a recording problem is not a good way to go.

[dlb2]

hate to say it, and it will make Mike roll his eyes , Altec had it figured out 40 years ago in the model 19's add a mid high and high attenuator so you can control highs and of course honkiness of horns. specifically to your liking. my original xovers had a single attentuator and it helped but wasnt enough. i built basically a copy of model 19 1200hz xover with better caps and resistors, and lots of them to get the 2nd attenuator in there at the right frequencies. it changed my whole sound and now i can totally control the highs an mid highs to my liking.
old tech is still the best tech

Attenuators? Are you kidding me? That's like having tone controls. You're right Steve. Speakers haven't gotten any better in the past forty years, just more expensive.

[Petro85]

Attenuators? Are you kidding me? That's like having tone controls. You're right Steve. Speakers haven't gotten any better in the past forty years, just more expensive.

Doug!!! you know it!!!

[AJ Soundfield]

ive too much bass for my small room. and too tight of walls around the woofers
as AJ mentions above there are still recordings that nothing can fix.

Well...my cardioid bass systems and remote control presets fix both quite well IMHO

[Mechnutt]

Sometimes you just can't do any thing about the room. My wife put up with my Magnepans in the family room but adding room treatments would be the last straw. I had to use other avenues to help with the hi frequency energy. Wish my preamp had defeatable tone controls.

[Kuoppis]

living rooms, or rather 'lived in rooms' with lots of stuff can sound excellent, either by plan or accident. you cannot judge an acoustic result by looking. but if you find you have to attenuate the tweeter excessively then maybe there are issues you can creatively solve and still retain more 'friendly' high frequency energy.

after taking more than 10 years getting my own dedicated room under control I'm the poster boy for harsh sounding dedicated rooms. OTOH there is more ultimate up side to whole frequency range optimization in a dedicated room. but it takes much more work than a lived in room with naturally occurring acoustics.

until you fix the room, you have no idea what is the recording, and what is the room, or what is the signal path, as far as what to fix or even if fixing is needed. assuming it's a recording problem is not a good way to go.

I tend to agree on this one. Proper room treatment with allow for sound improvements that are difficult obtain with even significantly more expensive gear.

On the other hand, in case trying to address any frequency separately before treating the room could bear a risk of sound imbalance at the end. That said, there also are natural environments which provide good absorption, like bookshelves. Not the kinds with glass doors though .


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[W9TR]

[jdandy]

Tom.......Good one. .