Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems What is the distortion on these female vocals?

Hi All,

Been a while since I've been in this bit of the site. Hope you're all well! Sorry for the long post.

Something's been bothering me with my system for a while now. I can hear it with my G68/DSP5000, G61R/DSP33 and also an Explorer2 with HD600s or my spangly new B&W P9s. I don't hear it in the car or in low/medium quality equipment.

Female vocals seem to have a coarse, harsh high frequency noise in the background. It doesn't seem correlated with the note that's being sung, but seems to gate on and off during vowels. I have a suspicion it's worse in the peaks (clipping? mic overloaded?) but it's always there, even on quiet bits. I first spotted it on Madeleine Peyroux, 'Dance Me To The End Of Love' (off Careless Love). Other than that, it's a gorgeous recording, but the moment she starts singing it pulls my attention away. It's still the worst example to my ears. It's present on all the other tracks. I suspect it sounds the worst because it's quite a sparse recording and doesn't mask it.

Another problematic recording is 'Don't Know Why' by Norah Jones from 'Come Away With Me'. It's not as bad but still there. I've tried the 44.1/16, MQA from Tidal and the 192/24 HDTracks version (direct on explorer, downsampled via MS200 and Tidal for the main system), they've all got it to the same degree.

I'm struggling to find a recording that hasn't got it. I haven't noticed it on male vocals. It's possible that maybe it's just a natural part of vocals that I've not noticed before. Although I struggle to believe that I'd hear it if the singer was standing in front of me. I don't hear it on strings, or any other instrument. Just vocals.

I'm a digital electronics engineer, I don't think that the problem is digital per se. I'd guess that tube amp fans would tell me to try a turntable and full analogue setup, but I could probably fix it with a low pass filter. My guess is that anything that wasn't flat to 20kHz would probably filter it out. Maybe second order harmonics mask it?

Has anyone hear the same thing? I've been googling pro audio sites and have seem some recording engineers complain that modern recordings have a high freq boost on vocals and need de-essing. I've also seen complaints about overloaded mics.

Apodising filters don't seem to improve or affect it. If I were to guess at a cause, I'd say maybe aliasing (but high sample rates don't improve it) or harmonic distortion. If it were harmonic distortion, then it's strange that I only hear it on vocals, but maybe it's because we're tuned to hear vocals. My suspicion is that it's in the recording, not my equipment. Or maybe it's in my ears or head.

My next step is to load a recording into Audacity and see if I can see it in the spectrum, and maybe have a go at filtering it. I just feel like you lot are pretty experienced and I might be experiencing something that's already well known.

Any advice would be appreciated. Have you heard it? Do you know a recording that doesn't have it? I've not described it particularly well, but it's a low level feature of the sound, easily detected once you've noticed it. It's not something less tangible like 'energy' or 'pace'.

Cheers,

Mark.

I just listened to the Norah Jones track from CD and the Madeleine Peyroux track from TIDAL via Sooloos through an 818v3 and DSP33s at volume 50 and 48 respectively with listening distance about 800mm.

Dammit there is something there - not sure I would call it distortion though. In both cases it sounds to me like breathy singing too close to the microphone. The Norah Jones seems to have a slight echo that the instruments do not, making it sound worse, the Madeleine Peyroux however sounds very dry and manifests it less.

Try the Joni Mitchell tracks "Court and Spark", "Help Me" and "Free Man in Paris" from her album Court and Spark in MQA 192/24 via TIDAL - I had it at volume 57. Perhaps a little sibilance at the louder points but I don't hear what the above examples showed. The chorus in "Free Man in Paris" is multi-tracked (IIRC she sang all the parts) so perhaps not a good example.

Hi Gianni,

Thanks so much - you've put my mind at rest for something that's been bugging me for ages. That Joni Mitchell album sounds great, I can close my eyes and imagine her singing in front of me - especially on 'Twisted'.. I heard the same thing on the peaks, but 99% of the time she sounds gorgeous. Maybe it was the tape going into the red? I'm going to give a few more of them a go. I can go back to listening to the music now!

Thanks again.

Cheers,

Mark.

BTW - I've got my DSP33s set up as near field monitors as well. The imaging is incredible. It's amazing what happens when the room is having less influence.

Curious how you’ve got your DSP33’s mounted for near field setup?

It's on my work setup, I use one of those 34" ultrawide monitors. The speakers are wall mounted on omnimounts with about an inch of clearance to each side of the screen when they're toed correctly. That leaves about a metre between the tweeters. I'm slightly ahead of the sweet spot in my normal working position, but when I lean back in my chair and close my eyes for the good bits, I'm bang on.

My main system is subject to WAF limitations, so the speakers aren't far from the corners. The resolution and imaging from the office system are miles better. The resolution is up there with good headphones, the imaging obviously miles better.

My setup is similar to that of Ultima_GTR.

Mine sit on my desk either side of my twin monitors about 1.1 metres apart toed in so I see the face flat when working.

Resolution, detail and imaging are outstanding, easily justifying the use of an 818v3.

Mark,

Can you please tell us if that appear with CD or streaming?

The exact details of the CD as there are many different versions at least here with Roon and Tidal..
I have only can listen with Tidal, so maybe it’s there or not.

Hi Robert,

It's all been streaming through Tidal / Roon. I've just noticed that I must have the CD somewhere because it's in my 44k FLAC library, so I'll see if I can find it and give it a spin on the G98 to compare.

I can hear it on the 192kHz MQA (both blue light through the Explorer2 / B&W P9 and also playing non-MQA at 48kHz through a Squeezebox Touch into my G61R/DSP33). The same noise is also there on the 192kHz FLAC that I bought from HDTracks. It doesn't seem to change with file or equipment, so that plus the fact that Gianni pointed me to some tracks that have it to a much lesser degree make me think it's in the recording.

On 'Don't know why', you can hear it in the 'i' of 'till' at 0:13, and constantly through the whole track. To hear it, just mentally filter out her singing, and you'll hear what sounds like high pass filtered white noise modulated against the volume of her voice. Gianni's suggestion of breath is good, but it's very high frequency. Maybe that makes it through the mic filters?

I can understand recording artifacts being part of the production (I love the turntable crackle and pop on Portishead), but to me it's illusion breaking. It stops me imagining the singer in front of me.

I hope this isn't like the chroma bug, and I've just infected you with a meme that will ruin some tracks for you!

Cheers,

Mark.

I had a similar issue on my previous system which went away after I made a few changes. Unfortunately I didn’t do it systematically to figure out exactly what did it, or if it was a combination.

Changes made:

- Added a Jitterbug between my RPi and Arcam rDac.
- Better USB cable between the above. Forest from Audioquest.
- Powered everything through a PS Audio Dectet

I’d also try an in-line Ethernet isolator. You can get them for about $100.

Rick

As the original poster indicated the sound is heard across multiple systems and various high definition source material, a logical conclusion would be that the sound is present in the original recording.

Having spent some time around both analog and digital audio production, I suggest that what is being heard is likely a purposely added effect called an Exciter (effect). Initially developed in analog form in the 1970's, the process adds very high frequency harmonic distortion and is commonly applied to vocals. Some find the effect enjoyable. Others not.

I owned an (analog) Aphex Exciter back in the day in my home studio and didn't like it much. Like many other analog effects, the equivalent is now commonly available in digital audio workstations as a VST plug-in.

Best regards,
Roger

Thanks Roger
Sounds like a plausible explanation.
Off to Wiki for a read.
Hector

When we were on a Drum Miking course, demonstarted were set ups from 2 to 8 mics. With the 8 mic set up we were shown how you add a 9th, the nastiest cheapest mic you can find recording an overview. This is then carefully folded into the mix like grit in an oyster.

Chris