An Object Lesson -- Going Crazy Over LP Sibilance When It's the Record Itself

As Hubert jan mentioned, sibilances depending on mistracking can be looked at as vertical needle motion. That will mean that the sibilance is spreading between the speakers, and has no direct focus. The sound will be out of phase. So that is one thing to listen for; normal sibilances don´t sound like that.
One could also check if the sibilances is reduced if summed to mono, they should be if they are caused by mistracking.

 

A number of singers have a naturally sibilant voice, which is then recorded with a microphone extremely close to the mouth - just like screechy guitar strings, which some people don't like, it's not a very faithful recording if it's not on the tape.

A really good recording (and album), is, 10cc, The Original Soundtrack, it doesn't matter if you listen to it via an early UK pressing on vinyl, or the DCC gold CD, there is sibilance. I believe Eric Stewart gave an interview, in which he said that he doesn't like the natural sibilance in his voice.

Of course some cartridges, especially if it's slightly misaligned, will exaggerate the sibilance, but it is there on the record, so obviously should be reproduced.

A very good singer told me that she softened certain vowels, or words, to reduce sibilance. It, would become it'd, tone would become tdone, say, say, say, pronounced more like, szay, szay, szay - you get the idea.

 

That's a very interesting contribution and quite a theory. But I don't buy it entirely. I can meet you halfway, but I still believe that while some people might be tougher than others regarding sibilance, I still think it's the engineer's job to figure out a solution. Can you remove the sibilance from Sylvester the Cat? Probably not, but that's not what you're talking about, right?

I set up mics for a LOT of vocalists while I was in college and again when working at a bar that had live music every night. You get the vocalist to go up to the mic during soundcheck and say over and over again, "One, T, T, T, T, Two, Ch, Ch, Ch, Ch, Check! Check!!!!" You do this for about ten minutes with each mic and each vocalist until you cut the distortion. Perhaps there are some singers who practice softening their sibilant attacks in order to sound better, themselves, but sound engineers have any manner of tools available to them to battle sibilance, especially in the studio as opposed to stage.

There are reasons you don't hear sibilance at all with most recordings and particularly in certain eras, especially the 1950s and 1960s when sound engineers were making records in order to emphasize the "Hi-Fi" sound, that is fuller mids and bass, and from when records were engineered to be played with conical styli.

Cutting head technology "improves," complex tip shapes make the scene, as well as the extended high end into the vinyl, audiophile tastes change with the technology, "Hi Fi' becomes "old fashioned," sibilance makes a huge appearance in the 1970s and the 1980s, bass is much reduced, and in many cases not even present, really. Vinyl by then is competing with digital, with a focus above 8k Hz no matter what you listen to, and the sibilance and problems of setting up expensive cartridges with complex tips shapes as well as the sibilance and other issues, drives most consumers in droves to the new perfect medium, CD.

Sibilance on masters or cut into records is just bad engineering.

 

I absolutely agree with most of what you have written, and I also used to set up my bands PA. Perfect sound until the place fills up, and the guitarists turn up!! But studios use pop shields, and may compress the vocals a little to reduce the sibilance. Even at source, the signal is sometimes tampered with!

The two female singers, which I have drummed with in semi-pro bands, are the ones that told me about softening vowels.

Ittss ssoo eassy to fall in love, would become closer to
Itz zo eazy do fall in love. I've slightly exaggerated, but you get the gist - have we unwittingly heard this technique on some recordings?

It may not be a coincidence that they were both professional backing singers in the 80s to early 90s, where not only they would visually be low profile, their voices would need to blend, rather than stand out. I don't know whether they were taught this technique, or developed it themselves, to reduce sound problems. We certainly didn't have poor sound of feedback problems with either.

I am sure that I once read an article about some singers softening their vowles, many years ago.

Maybe with the improvements in sound systems, better quality digital effects, and in-ear monitoring, techniques like this are no longer required?

 

Many people don't no what to listen for.

 

Yup.

 

I've got a bad case of this lately, hearing those SSSSS a lot on records other people didnt.
What stinks is it can make a great song just un-listenable.
cart aligned, stylus cleaned, everythings level.....it's a circle of madness.

 

How old is the stylus? You say it's aligned...have you checked VTF properly (at record level...and not with a Shure gauge)? Are you setting VTF at the top of the range for the cart?

 

Have You read the thread, there is a lot of info here.

 

New stylus tracking force is right near the top

 

Yup I think I'm in the just gotta live with some sibilance boat

Once you hear it you hear it everywhere !

 

There is no need to hear more sibilance than there naturally are in the recordings. It just takes a bit of testing.

 

It just occurred to me in your post above this page you mentioned mono as a test
My amp has a mono switch on it I may try that and see what happens

Only reason I'm going this far is many of the records I hear a harsh s I got from members of this and other forums who it was crystal clear for so the problem has to be with me

 

It´s not known how Your records sound. You could upload some examples of it. Also firstly try to find out if the problems really lie in the vinyl playback, so it´s not in the recordings.

 

I'll try and get some rips on issue tracks, a few I heard big a lot of shhh on from Van Halen 1 I listened to my flac cd rip and sure enough there's the shhh from Lee Roth on atomic punk.

Worst offender so far is Tracy chapman - revolution , I can only compare to streaming which doesn't have the issue .

Thanks for the help

 

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This is actually HIGH FREQUENCY DISTORTION. A subject not discussed
Very often.
My Shure v15 was fitted with a generic Thakker stylus. This is fine on test records. BUT.,, most test records cover low frequency tests.
Now coupled with the situation these days where modern lps are cut at a very levels sibilance is a real problems past which spoils things.
Older Lps are
cut at a lower more
Realistic level, I fitted an SAS Jico stylus and now sibilance is a thing of the past.

 

Finally someone who is right. In the pop field records are often cut too loud to achieve a good noise level for the teenagers that buy those records and play them on Crosley's.
Consider sibilance part of the game and enjoy your real good records in your favorite chair with a cigar, a drink and snack.

 

I’m a bit late to this thread but I found it super helpful.

Years ago I had a project debut Carbon (with the 2M red) that was extremely sibilant with some records, I upgraded to a clearaudio (with a used maestro cart) with not much better results in terms of sibilance.

I finally took my table to a HiFi shop where the owner knew what he was doing, he set everything up correctly and found my used maestro was very very used. I switched my cart to a Dynavector 10x5 and eventually upgraded my table to a well tempered lab. With the help of that shop owner sibilance has greatly been reduced.

There are records where it is still in the recording however. My go to example is “butterfly” off weezer’s pinkerton. The mofi pressing of that album is extremely high in treble and makes the song almost unlistenable. I would bet that pressing on any set up would be very sibilant. The VMP reissue of that same album is much much better, but it is still in the recording.

A very helpful article on this topic is below.

What are the causes of Sibilance? | Soundsmith

I agree with the author that you can only say that sibilance is due to something besides the record/recording itself if you hear sibilance over a broad range of records.

 

Know, they don't.

 

It's happend to me too. I realigned the cartridge more times like a fool. And then I heard the same sibilance in other guy's needledrop. Bad vinyl pressing, I think. Sibilance and voice harshness which I couldn't remove with the RX 6 de-esser.

The Alan Parsons Project - I Robot - A4 - Breakdown
The Alan Parsons Project - I Robot - B3 - Day After Day (The Show Must Go On)

Code:

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/listening-to-on-vinyl-part-326.805201/page-51#post-20532058

I put the link in "code" because the Chrome restrictions.

 

I think a major cause of sibilance is the diamond not mounted on the cantilever correctly which amounts to a situation that many times is not correctable.

 

It can certainly result in all kinds of distortion. The only way to know for sure is to break out the microscope.

 

Just to clarify - sibilance is a normal element of singing and speech. Without it, many words would be unintelligible.

The problem happens when audio systems are unable to capture or reproduce sibilant sounds properly, and those sounds become distorted or exaggerated. This can easily happen in both tape recording and disc recording. Sometimes it's caused by mic choice or placement, or vocal technique.

If a tape with distorted sibilance is mastered to vinyl the sibilance problem often compounds, because the distortion introduced by the tape recording is hard to cut and reproduce, so the distortion itself worsens in disc mastering and/or disc playback.

So we're not striving for recordings without sibilance. We're striving for recordings with clean, undistorted, natural sounding sibilance.

 

Filling me UP with your rules oooh hooo. That UP from Getting Better on SGT Peppers always sounded distorted even on CD. But 30 yrs ago it drove me nuts on vinyl.

 

Here one example of SAS stylus performance. One record I bought in the eighties and very much played (Poison Arrow, ABC) with a very loud sss-part. The SAS plays it reasonably well. "Can you keep the ssssecret".

Dropbox - Poisson arrow.wav