Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Painfully Bright Material

ok, i just bought this cd by a band called bleed the dream (Bleed the dream - built by blood) and it sounds good on my sony isolating earbuds, and my van stereo, as well as my logitech speakers on my computer, however, as soon as i put the cd in my dvd player and play through the axioms it is literly painfully bright to the point where i dont want to listen to it, is there any way to tame this "brightness" (tried lowering treble on avr, not much better) could i possibly be my electronics? or is it purely the source material to blame?

When in doubt, blame the source. But seriously, if it were your electronics, then almost everything you played would sound bright, no?

well it really depends on the kind of music, some genres are alot brighter then others, but usually it doesnt really bother me.. im still thinking that it could just be that my yamaha is making the already bright source material brighter...yikes lol..oh well cant solve this anytime soon, not getting another avr till like march

I doubt another receiver will do ya any better with that material.This is more than likely another case of the recording not being mastered very well.

I just bought "Gorillaz - Demon Days" it's also painfully bright, I can't listen to it on my Axiom system, hurts my ears. But in the car, or on the iPod, it's fine.

I think they do this on purpose for some types of music, pop, that they expect to get a lot of radio play. Since most car radios are pretty poor quality, the bright recording stands out over the road noise? just a theory.

i think you got a good theory going on there, i think most people here would agree about the way it is mixed

Darren, no there's no problem with your receiver. Apparently certain frequencies in those recordings are boosted to make them appear more impressive on mediocre equipment. If turning the treble control down doesn't help much, the problem may be more in the mid-range rather than the treble, and would need the use of an equalizer which could lower the mid-range frequencies. Another factor may be that those recordings are just plain distorted and clip on peaks regardless of what is done.

If you have any way to take down the 3-5 KHz region that should help a lot. Your receiver seems to have a built-in eq for the center channel only (SET MENU 5) which might help a bit if you pick a surround mode which puts a fair amount of signal in the center channel.

Darren,
thanks for the tip on Bleed the Dream, i was going to pick that up the other day when they came through S'toon because I didn't get a chance to see them live. Might have to rethink that.

its a pretty good cd, just not on my axioms the singer reminds me alot of cody banks from papa roach, pretty much this band is what papa roach sounded like if they were hardcore with a bit of emo thrown in...