Reducing DT770 sibilance? :(

[Froody129]

I've been using my DT770s for a couple months now. When I first got them I honestly thought I'd received broken headphones; they sounded that bad. With a lot of listening they improved immensely and I'm now pretty happy with them. However, the sibilance on these is getting to me... Rock music and many vocal tracks suck to listen to because of the chalkboard-esque squeak I get from them. I tried EQing it out but I can't seem to reliably reduce sibilance without completely ruining all treble. I'd be grateful for any other methods for reducing sibilance.

 

Currently I'm driving them with an old NAD 3020e, and the sibilance is worst there, but using them with another old Sony 5.1 amp, as well as mobile devices the sibilance is still present.

[rice guru]

4 hours ago, Froody129 said:

I've been using my DT770s for a couple months now. When I first got them I honestly thought I'd received broken headphones; they sounded that bad. With a lot of listening they improved immensely and I'm now pretty happy with them. However, the sibilance on these is getting to me... Rock music and many vocal tracks suck to listen to because of the chalkboard-esque squeak I get from them. I tried EQing it out but I can't seem to reliably reduce sibilance without completely ruining all treble. I'd be grateful for any other methods for reducing sibilance.

 

Currently I'm driving them with an old NAD 3020e, and the sibilance is worst there, but using them with another old Sony 5.1 amp, as well as mobile devices the sibilance is still present.

Sounds like you just very treble sensitive. Are you sure the tracks your listening to just has sounds that you think may be sibilant? The best way I found in reducing treble is adding foam disks like these 

[Froody129]

On 9/8/2019 at 2:38 PM, rice guru said:

Sounds like you just very treble sensitive. Are you sure the tracks your listening to just has sounds that you think may be sibilant? The best way I found in reducing treble is adding foam disks like these 

My hearing was tested a while back for unrelated reasons and it turned out I do have treble sensitivity. I didn't think it would make the DT770s this bad for me (there are complaints of sibilance in the DT770s). 

 

I did check other tracks, and other equipment. While some of my tracks (some rock) had base sibilance my IEMs are much more tame. 

 

Thank you for the suggestion, I may try changing amplification because that seemed to make a difference 

[rice guru]

42 minutes ago, Froody129 said:

My hearing was tested a while back for unrelated reasons and it turned out I do have treble sensitivity. I didn't think it would make the DT770s this bad for me (there are complaints of sibilance in the DT770s). 

 

I did check other tracks, and other equipment. While some of my tracks (some rock) had base sibilance my IEMs are much more tame. 

 

Thank you for the suggestion, I may try changing amplification because that seemed to make a difference 

An amp made the difference for me 990s used to be eqd for me until I got the liquid spark

[GoldenSound]

Unfortunately you've chosen a pretty bright headphone, so there will only be so much that can be done.

Best option would be to swap to something with a warmer signature most likely. 

Failing that, most people would say get some tubes, as those tend to tame brighter headphones to a more pleasant tonality, but a decent tube amp will cost significantly more than swapping to some HD600s/650s or Anandas etc