It was a subtle change, and it might not work for you. Some of the difference was allowing new cables to settle in my system, but the main thing is I reversed the direction of the fuse (turned it around). Yeah, I know it seems weird, but I learned this from messing around with aftermarket fuses on other gear (which are not recommended with the Bartok) and it did help with the stock fuse.
I still have some issues with loud transients because it is so dynamic, but the fuse thing mellowed it a bit. This puts me in the ballpark where I can more easily tune the sound with a darker headphone cable or tweaks to the network input. The Crossfeed feature takes away some edge, but I don’t prefer it.
Changed power cable from the my local hifistore made one to another and the harshness and to much in my face boomysound went away. From my experience of trying different cables (power, headphone etc) the Bartok is very sensible to changes.
The tweaks a mentioned above helped somewhat, but as I’ve been sitting with it the harshness doesn’t seem to go away and is also present with external HP amps. I’m pretty sure it’s more of an electronic problem than a headphone one.
The tricky thing I’m find in system matching is that unless I go out of my way for warm and wooly components, with literally every improvement in resolution, noise, and signal I get, things get brighter. Higher end power cables=brighter. Higher end DAC=brighter. Higher end headphone cables, power distributor etc=brighter. I thought my chain was voiced pretty neutral. The only things that soften stuff are better digital cables and vibration feet.
If I go back to stock cabling, no power filters, etc. the sound is more grungy and midrange focused, but so much of the harshness is gone. It seems to become apparent or amplified depending on how extended and clean the signal is. High resolution vs listenability is a real razors edge.
Ian, what kind of source material do you listen to mostly? Generally speaking, going higher-end inevitably exposes more of the inadequacies of the source material.
Literally all kinds. I’d say that maybe a solo instrument or string quartet DSD are tolerable, but anything more harmonically dense, involving anything electronic becomes a problem.
The deficiencies of source material are not necessarily going to manifest as harshness, a lot of music is recorded to tape, which softens transients, smooths highs, and compresses dynamic range. If After The Gold Rush is sounding fatiguing to my ears, that does not sound like a truly transparent or balanced system.
I tend to agree with you. I have been suffering from an ear infection that can cause distortion on loud notes especially when listening to headphones. I thought it was an intermittent fault with my audio system until I found it happening at a live classical concert.
Fortunately a course of medication seems to have minimised its occurrence.
The OP appears to listen at quite high levels, 80 dB average which suggests higher peaks. I wonder whether he should not book an appointment with an audiologist at least to remove the question of some kind of impairment.
I have tinnitus 24/7 as a result of a medical treatment for cancer about 12 years ago. It never goes away, and it is louder than average conversation. I have learned to hear through and around it. My hearing itself is pretty good for my age. I’ve been following this thread, and wasn’t quite sure what to make of it at first [especially the notion of tinnitus that wasn’t always present], until I realized some similarities between my own experience and that of the OP. I am somewhat sensitive to harshness at upper & upper-mid frequencies. And I think it is true that the better the equipment, the more likely it is to reveal what we might call “glare” in some recordings. I am also a devoted headphone listener, with multiple amps/headphones fed by my MSB Select DAC. Two of my headphone amps are high-end tube amps, and two are solid state, each paired with headphones that are strong in detail and resolution, but also quite smooth with the right amp. As I think about it, I can recall often going into retail shops or friends’ homes and being struck by a harshness with both speaker and headphone systems, until I took some time to “tune” my hearing to the system. That was one reason I took multiple headphones to my initial Bartok demo, that turned into a Rossini femto, that turned into a Vivaldi purchase.
I would concur that time with an audiologist might be well spent. That’s not to say “it’s the OP’s problem.” More that it might be a data point that assists his evaluation of the problem.
I suspect some posters may be a bit incredulous, but the pain/tinnitus problem was actually resolved by adding an Uptone EtherRegen to the ethernet chain. The system at present is still a tad bright, but the artifact that was hurting my ears is gone.
I had tried a few things to mitigate the treble of the system. As described above, I found that the fuse is subtly directional and one direction is a bit less bright (albeit less detailed). I also found that some harshness was diffused when I changed the surface the Bartok was placed on.
I’m hoping that new HP cables and an upgraded vibration rack will finally set a more balanced tonality, but the actual thing that was aggravating me, and that was amplified by so many other things in the system, was the ethernet input. It had nothing to do with headphones themselves, although I continue to find that balanced headphone operation can be a bit much unless everything else in the system is tonally balanced perfectly.
I’m finding that the higher performance/higher resolution components you are using is a bit like driving at higher speed, and the subtle tonal shift of things like cables etc are like drift in a particular direction. At a low speed you might not have any problem with the car drifting a tiny bit in one direction, but at 90 miles an hour it starts getting hard to control the vehicle. A modestly bright cable, power cable, bad component placement that makes little or even positive impact with less revealing components can turn very bright with a true high performance DAC.
I can also vouch for the Transparent Ultra Headphone cable. It pairs very nicely with the Bartok HP amp and sounds incredibly rich and pleasant, especially in balanced mode. Much better than any of my other headphone cables, even though the Prion 4 has more bass, treble extension etc, the Transparent just sounds the most right and musical. If you can afford $1800 for a headphone cable I wouldn’t go with anything else.
