Help desperately needed in order to tame over zealous tweeter!

[Macca]

I think we have our explanation for 6dB not being much. Bloody old codgers. I bet you think you've got it on at background levels when in fact they can hear it in the next parish.

[walpurgis]

I think we have our explanation for 6dB not being much. Bloody old codgers. I bet you think you've got it on at background levels when in fact they can hear it in the next parish.

Saucy young sprout!!

[rdpx]

From the title I thought this was going to be a Donald Trump thread.



Sent from my ZX81

[fatmarley]

But I thank you for it Mat.

I have been troubled by excessive sibilance on the centre channel of my AV set-up for a while. I have changed a lot of kit of late in an effort to address this but must conclude that poor quality broadcast material on HDTV and SkyHD is the root cause. I am on the brink of buying yet another centre channel speaker to try but I had been wondering if there might be some tweak to the centre channel speaker, tweeter and/or crossover, that might ameliorate this.

The centre speaker is now a Tannoy Revolution RC (legacy model). How is the tweeter damping resistor mod performed? Is it a case of buying a 40p resistor from Maplin, removing the crossover and soldering the resistor in place or...? Any guidance would be appreciated. Many thanks.

Yep, those cheap ceramic wirewounds from Maplin are fine. You can either remove the tweeter and solder one end of the resistor to the positive terminal and the other end to the negative terminal (the terminals on tweeters are notoriously flimsy and very easy to overheat, so be very careful If you do it this way) , or you can find the crossover and put the resistors across the tweeter output (Remove the tweeter and use the wire colour as a guide or use a multimeter set to continuity to find the correct wires to solder across).

The smaller the resistor value, the more attenuation you'll get - Try a 50ohm first and if it's too much try 100ohm.

[Antinchip]

Matt, thanks for the explanation. Not sure I'm up to the task but will have a look at the innards. Woolly sock treatment might be the place for me to start!

Martin, thank you for your observations. I went through an extensive process of elimination swapping the kit;

Sources - Bluray, SACD player, HDTV and SKYHD.
Amplification - Swapped between Arcam AVR300 receiver and Primare SP31 pre/processor with three different power amps including Croft 7, Amptastic and Primare.
Speaker - Swapped between Castle Keep, Q Acoustics Q1010i, JPW Mini Monitor Gold, Tannoy Revolution RC.
Various interconnect cables including Mark Grant, Canare and Ecosse.
Various speaker cables in both single and bi-wire configuration including Cable Talk, Avondale Black Link, Van Damme and Ecosse.
I have sorted all cabling to ensure that power and signal cables are separate and kept AC and DC on separate sockets and distribution blocks.

In any of the above combinations sibilance was present on HDTV and SKYHD but not the others. The issue is present on broadcast material and is variable in extent. The issue does not occur on downloaded material.

The configuration that I have settled with is; Primare SP31 pre/processor, Ecosse The Composer IC, Primare A30.3 power and Tannoy Revolution RC centre speaker single wired with Ecosse MS 2.15 solid core speaker cable. I have just added an Isotek EVO3 Mira mains conditioner for the HDTV (Panasonic GT30B Viera plasma) and SKYHD box and, shock horror, felt this helped with both sound and picture quality! This is the most satisfactory combination and the instances of sibilance are less frequent and less severe but still undesirable and a little irritating. Front and two channel duties are performed by a pair of Croft 7R mono blocks feeding Tannoy Turnberry SE's. Overall the sound can be superb, Westworld last night was most enjoyable!

My conclusion is that broadcast sound quality is variable and that the system is revealing of the deficiencies. Hence my thought of a "line of least resistance approach" (pun not intended) to try to treat the symptom in an effort to moderate the occasional intrusion of sibilance. Otherwise I will just have to put up with it as I am not inclined to change all the kit yet again.

Thank you all for your various comments and the discussion is interesting in any event. Cheers.