smoothing those sibilants...

Ooh Ooh I took back the Sony junk and bought the Panasonic DVD-a ??10. Couldn't resist. The local "TV Lenny's" had it for $999 and sold it to me (I'm charming???) for the'family' price of $803. It is FAB on regular CD's. It was worth every penny just as a CD player. The 24 bit re??do is a great feature on 1984--1989 crummy CD mastering. The "bad" stuff is gone! (only on a really new CD: Fiona Apple's Tidal was the 24 bit worse)

It's possible that the sibilance you're hearing is an accurate portrayal of what's on your CDs. Sibilance can result from bad miking, poor microphone choice, the vocalist and/or over processing of the music signal. Most of the above post only address the upper midrange hardness that may be part of your system and they will do nothing to eliminate the sibilance if it's in the source material. If you're truly serious, you need a de-esser (a frequency dependent compressor). Consider the TC Electronics Finalizer line or Drawmer Masterflow Processor. Both are pro audio signal processers that will eliminate sibilance. Most likely you don't need to get this serious, but if you do, these are the components you should look at.

Removing sibilance, what a great objective ! Unfortunately in my experience it takes zillions of dollars to do so without sacrificing detail or tonal balance or something. Room interactions are many times responsible, I wonder if the room correction systems can help.

Pinning or better yet holding your ears back and in reduces sibilance. No joke, try it. Hwy61 is also right on IMO. Having attempted a career as a professional musician I have heard a lot of SSSSS words in live performances that were due to both the artists lack of control and mike etiquette as well as the equipment. To reduce all of the SSSSS sounds would be to not have an acurate portrayal of the source material, again IMO. If the ear trick works it would stand to reason that Joe's recommendation of room treatment would have a "major" impact on sibilance as well (it sure does on everything else). I only wish I were willing to work more with our listening room, though my wife did just give me a nice shroud to hang over a rather large painting that hangs behind the speakers, which makes a big improvement in the mid and HF's. I guess that I am fortunate in that I have never had a problem with this (I also feel that sibilance on occassion is normal) in any of my vinyl based systems and do not experience a problem with it in my current digital system (I also use silver IC's most of the time). Anyway Elizabeth, I am happy that you were able to control it by upgrading your gear, plus you really seem to like the new player. I will be adding a new DAC to my old CAL player shortly, who knows maybe I will get me some of that sibilance along with some added detail.

I agree that many recordings seem to have it, at least as I can tell from listening via headphones. Recordings are many times responsible for the worst evils. I have mistakenly attributted poor sound to other parts of the chain when the problem was the recording --even on recordings that make the Records to Die For in Stereophile !