I’ve just got the Moondrop Venus and it’s great.
However I do hear sibilance when it comes to certain female vocals in particular. I especially hear alot of sibilance when listening to Aimer’s songs. (love her songs btw!)
My source is Spotify running out of Fiio K9pro ESS or Fiio BTR7.
Any other Venus users facing this and any idea if changing pads or cables light reduce the sibilance?
Thank you!
Heya thanks ya’ll for the comments and suggestions. I tried out my ancient pair of Etymotic ER-4s(the red and blue one) on the same songs and also hear some sibilance too.
I’ll try EQ-ing.(theres a first time for everything right!) I also have the Moondrop XLR cable on the way from the online shop, will share if it makes any difference.
I had to EQ my venus to make it worth to my preferences. It has been really nice with the EQ I use and I like the overall design of these cans.
You should have waited for PARA, according to reivew it’s half of the price and perform equally well.
Try not to change too much on eq, sometime less is better than doing more.
Aimer’s voice is quite unique and husky.
I face the same problem with her voice being sibilant in some of my iems.
After experimenting with some EQ on different iems, I found peaks above 10khz are causing this issue with Aimer’s songs.
Do note that I only felt her voice to be sibilant in few of her songs.
Aimer’s “Midnight Sun” album is basically unlistenable in my IE 200s without EQ. Whereas her “daydream” album is just made perfect for it.
I love her songs too:)
Like what other people have said, try to EQ down the 5khz to 6khz area and maybe reduce abit of the 8khz as long as it still sounds normal it should be fine.
Another way it to add toilet paper(try 1 ply at a time) untill the sibilance is subdued enough. This has the downside of trapping energy and giving more sustain to everything which if overdone can sound quite wonky.
Cables wise hard to rec since I donno how Venus reacts to cables but based off guestimation either a OFCopper cable if you prefer a heavier and smoother presentation or a silver and graphene cable if you prefer to keep the speed. Try to avoid OCC copper and silver plated copper(esp this) as those tends to highlight the upper mids and esp depending oh how the SPC is done can get very aggressive.
Personally I would try the toilet paper method first since that cost very little and has immediate effects since EQ is a pain unless you use only the Venus. Cables wise I would hold back since Ive been told my sensitivity to cables is on the higher side and cable swaps do nothing to some.
Update: interestingly when I used the 3.5mm copper cable with 6.35mm plug, the sibilance is less. I’m using the same k9pro Ess on high gain. Previously I was using only the 4.4mm SPC cable provided.