Softening of the harsh highs
I have a number of LPs in my library that are not the most pleasant thing to listen to. Usually it's the harshness of the highs that makes me get up and take the LP off the turntable. Surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly), there seem to be quite a lot of LPs that sound way harsher than poorly mastered CDs. You sometimes ask yourself (while listening to a badly mastered, badly pressed LP): "Where is that vinyl 'warmth' that people are talking about?"
Lately I started noticing an interesting phenomenon -- as my turntable upgrades seem to be burning-in, some LPs that I used to cringe putting on started sounding acceptable. The most recent 'discovery' -- Big Brother And The Holding Company "Cheap Thrills". I remember last year listening to it and cringing from the onslaught of hard, harsh screechy highs. Last night I put the same LP on, and lo and behold, the screechiness has all but disappeared, to be replaced with silky, pleasant highs!
So my puzzlement is: what changed? What modification in one's front-end chain could contribute to this much needed improvement? Is it the tonearm upgrade, or the phono upgrade, or the cable upgrade, or some undefined 'synergy' between components that is now manifesting itself once all the components have settled in?
Don't you just hate it when you cannot detect where the post ends and a signature line begins?
Alex.