Looking for sibilance (piercing highs) examples

Anyone have any vocal music that has piercing sibilants when listened to with a treble-spiking headphone? Please share. Thanks!

She goes up 1 octave @ 4:00…
Someone saw her live and the sound guy didn’t do his job, so it was unbearable, lol.

Otherwise, that should do it. :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like

Listened to this album recently, way too much highs, no bass at all, ear-shattering-pickaxe-cymbals. Like, the entire album is ā€œ/ā€ shaped. :confused:

Edit: I don’t know if the real CD is like that. I hope not, because I’m buying it ASAP.

1 Like

Well, there you go, holy shit! :scream:

1 Like

Wow – thanks everyone! One could easily imagine a house of sonic horrors. I’ll contribute one of my own that I found casually researching this topic:


It also shows why examples of troublesome sibilance may be hard to find in commercially recorded audio.
1 Like

That was amazing :+1: there’s a massive difference between piercing highs and sibilance.

LOL

I own and love the DT 1990. I’m old enough to have my own built-in treble excess filter, but I’ve also had a few pairs of young ears listen to them. They can’t find a treble issue, either. In my working life I did a fair amount of technical writing. Not only do I enjoy writing, I find I always learn something by forcing myself to rigorously organize my thoughts. So purely for my own amusement and interest (and to keep from going insane a few days ago when my internet when) I started writing a review of the 1990.

The more I dig into the polarization between those who get ear-stab-itis from the 1990s and those who don’t, the more I’m perplexed. In what recordings are people encountering 7-9 KHz energy? It’s often referred to as a sibilance issue, but apparently sibilance is routinely ā€œde-essedā€ from commercial recordings. Few recordings even contain frequencies in this range. Few (acoustic) instruments produce any meaningful amount of overtone energy up there.

So, if it’s not vocal and not acoustic instruments, then maybe it’s an electronica thing? Bingo. Just tested the first several songs on a Spotify EDM playlist. Plenty of frequency from 6 KHz on out. Clearly, it’s designed to literally be edgy. So, if you have an ear canal resonance up there and you have a treble-emphasis headphone…

The sibilance designation seems to be a false lead. But are there any other genres that employ lots of electronically created sounds? If you can think of any please reply. I’m totally ignorant of non-acoustic music.

IAC – blessings once again for the saintly open-sourcerers that created Audacity. I’m continually amazed how often it comes in handy.

Long story short, that’s literally a +10dB bump to overcompensate for the fact that they can’t make headphones with decent +10khz highs. They’re like beats, for people who like treble. Tracks are ā€œde-essedā€ because it’s unwanted by many. Most Beyerdynamics are ā€œessersā€, so don’t be surprised many people don’t like them.

There’s pop music with a lot of synth sounds, every rock/metal/whatever band with a keyboardist, violins… and now I realize you’re basically asking me the list of instruments not ā€œcompatibleā€ with Beyerdynamics. So, huh, yeah, music itself is never the problem.

Pretty much any asian female vocals have sibilance problems.