[rhythmdevils]

I am curious to know what the majority of head-fi believe on this issue. Please read...

HARSHNESS: When a particular frequency range is elevated, or otherwise sounds jagged or sticks out more than other sounds, causing discomfort or pain.

I do not mean sibilance. Sibilance can come along with harshness, but I'm not talking about pronounced sss sounds here.

Also, I'm talking about the one you usually blame for harshness. Of course there is no 100% of the time answer. But I do believe that for most of you there will be one or the other that you generally blame when you hear harshness.

I'm going to hold off on my thoughts as to not create bias...

 

[Pedro H.]

Both, IMO.
If you have a lossy audio with low quality and bitrate, it will harsh even on an Orpheus. But, generally, the harshness' intensity depends on the equipment.

 

[ksu06]

Hmmm, this is a good question. I would probably lean towards the equipment because my experience with crappy quality/low bit rate files is that it generally sounds fuzzy and less detailed, less realistic overall. I don't really know the science behind audio compression, but it seems odd to me that compressing a file would add frequency spikes that the OP describes ... if anything, my intuition tells me that the spikes are more likely to be taken out by compression. Again, I know nothing about the technical side of audio compression so please enlighten me.

It's another thing completely if when the OP says recording, he means the mastering/sound engineer side of the recording, because I can believe that certain CD's are not very well recorded by the studio (I feel my CPOP music suffers from this).

 

[Meliboeus]

Both.

When i listened mainly with grados, i used to think it could only be the recording, when i tried the HD650, i am persuaded that it can be caused by both. On the grados every track was fatiguing, 50% due to phones only, 50% still is to some extent even on the 650, so it's definitely due to a badly mastered recording.

On the other hand i don't believe lossy compression adds harshness, here by "low quality source material" i mean "badly recorded material".

 

[MrGreen]

All of the above.

Just for the record, I find that low quality bright headphones are very harsh, but bright high quality headphones are brilliant and very pleasing (and actually reproduce timbre very accurately).

One of my favourite tracks to test brightness/harshness is "Billie Jean" by michael jackson. It's a very bright track and will sound earbleeding from a low quality amp or a bright low quality headphone. It will sound dull from dark headphones, but have a great amount of clarity and pop from ~neutral