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In Reply to: Is anyone else bothered by 'EE' sounds on vocals? posted by silence on May 7, 2007 at 20:58:02:
Try a quick experiment:Turn your system off, switch the speaker wires' polarity. In other words, hook them up "backwards", red-to-black and black-to-red. Turn the system on, and listen again to see if what you are hearing clears up or not. If it does, check to make sure sibilance, or "s" sounds don't get worse. If your "EEs" and "S" sounds are ok, it may be that something in your system is inverting the polarity of the signal.
In my system, getting polarity corrected not only noticably cleaned up timbre issues, cymbals sounded much more realistic, hissing sibilance, especially at the ends of words disappeared, and I got a "free" octave of bass extension, and all of the bass range was much cleaner as well.
If that doesn't help, ontrack2 is correct. Buy more of the artist's recordings, and send them a note to use the extra income to take some vocal lessons!
BT
Follow Ups:
How did you test for absolute polarity in your system? Was this just inferring it by ear or was it something more scientific?
Bill
Well, the short answer is by listening.However, my formal training is as a musician (trumpet player since age 10), and after 30+ years of performing and listening to live music, from various level groups, those sounds "soak in".
Also, I took a few classes in college, both grad and undergrad, such as "Physics in the Arts", and a few electronic music courses. The first electronic music course I took, we were very limited as to actual equipment, mostly reel-to-reel tape decks, and an analog synthesizer od two. Back then (did I just type "back then"? damn I'm getting old), programming your trusty old Arp Odessy required a thorough knowledge of the parameters of a wave that controls what the human ear perceives as pitch, timbre, loudness, etc.
I was also lucky in that some of my teachers taught me how to listen for very minute flaws in the sound of a student, or group of students, how to analyze what I was hearing, and come up with a quick (hopefully correct) solution to rectify the problem.
So, from my formal training I knew polarity was important, but I became a BIG stickler for making sure things were correct after I got a hold of an older Parasound preamp that let you switch polarity on-the-fly.
Once you hear it switch back and forth, it becomes REALLY obvious to just about anyone.
Lyrics become much more understandable (even the late James Brown!), percussion instruments and piano become much more realistic, and, depending on the recording, instruments and voices tend to sound more like the way they do naturally. Also, it tends to add that last "missing octave" back onto the bass end of your system.So, that's the long answer. Not necessarily scientific by using some sort of device to measure, but by training, and not really "inferring", but using carefully trained ears.
Sorry it took so long to respond, things have been a bit frantic around here! :)
BT
Problem with doing what you suggest is that there's no polarity consistency from one recording to another. So while that may be a cause, it will be unpredictable - hence the observation that the effect is present on "some" recordings. And switching wires is a minor pain in the butt, so unless you find the effect really annoying, it's probably not worth the effort. I know there are some amps and/or preamps that let you reverse polarity simply by pressing a button ... but I have no idea which makes and models.
"Music is the medicine of a troubled mind." -- Walter Haddon, 1567
Well, yeah, I know. I meant the message as an experiment to see if what the poster was hearing was a polarity problem, or problems caused by auto-tune or just plain bad singing.I hope noone thought I was suggesting that as a permanent solution.
Now, that said I find that almost every recording I have on CD is inverted, BUT, it's not because of the recording, it's because of the CD player itself. Most commercially available CD players invert. I would imagine the impression that out of all available recordings, you ave a 50/50 chance of hearing one inverted comes from guys who switch back-and-forth from their CD player to their turntable often. Think about it, how many people have one of each of their albums in both formats? I would imagine not very many. Given that most CD players invert, and most turntables don't, people would get the impression that the recordings are the problem. I would imagine this is also a big reason a lot of people prefer vinyl. Once you hear a piece you are familiar with in the correct polarity, the difference is night and day, THD and frequency response numbers be damned.
So, switching speaker wires is in no way a solution, but a quick and easy way to see if that is in fact the problem. Now, for solutions:
If all you listen to is CDs, you can probably be very happy living with the speaker cables inverted. (free solution)
If you listen to a mix of CD/vinyl, you may have an almost as easy solution, if you have access to the tonearm wires at the back of the cartridge. Leave the speaker cables inverted, that's the easiest way to fix CD polarity. On the back of the phono cartridge, switch the red wire with the green wire, and the white wire with the blue one. Since the phono cartridge is a truly balanced signal, this succesfully inverts the phono signal as well. Now, almost all of your recordings will play correct polarity.
Sorry guys that have P-mount cartridges, it's doable, but not quite as easy.
I don't know many preamps that have polarity switches off the top of my head, but most likely the preamp would have to have balanced circuitry to make it work, so try looking around for balanced in/out preamps. I tried incorporating a polarity invert switch into my preamp design, which is simple, and single-ended. The only way it can work is if you are feeding the outputs into monoblocks. I'm sure there are probably ways to do it in a single-ended topology, but I believe in the "as simple as possible" school of thought (which probably comes directly from my work as a repair tech! :) ).
I do have one commercial preamp I own that does have a polarity switch, a Parasound P/HD-1500. It is a dual-mono layout with balanced circuitry, very good build quality, and made with premium parts (I think half the weight of the thing is Black Gate caps), and designed by John Curl. Unfortunately, they do not seem to be easy to find, and not well known. On the other hand, that does seem to be a buyer's advantage, because once you locate one, it is normally priced FAR below its worth to someone who loves music.
BT
p.s., John Curl, if you happen to read this, I was curious as to why the P/HD-1500 didn't have a few vents on top of the case? When I'm using mine, I tend to run it "topless" in the rack. Should the mosfets not be allowed to cool too much? TIA
d
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