I still think it’s too soon to dismiss burn-in. 5 weeks is nothing, I’ve still had big up’s and downs after 5 months!
Burndys can be temperamental little buggers when they’ve been moved. Especially if you’ve changed how they were originally stressed. I had one burndy go west and that just lost the bass impact. It did sound brighter but not to the point sibilance.
I assume there’s been no change in any earthing arrangements?
Geko you have just lit a bulb in my grey matter! I have a dedicated CU with 4 double unswitched sockets. I had a PS per double socket for years - I think I changed the order inadvertently - will report if I find anything.
Quite interesting, I have now checked the earthing (I have one pl per double socket straight into a dedicated CU close by). Also found a small issue with one of the 300 burndies, now fixed. I decided to revert to a single tower of Isoblue for now since that brings me back to familiar territory. I have a spare shelve between brawn and brain. Fraim glass removed, all cables meticulously checked over and dressed perfectly. So pretty much as before the dr upgrade was done some 5-6 weeks ago. Sibilance is still very much present. However even from cold I am hearing much more from the 300, perhaps indeed it is still running in and going through a bright phase. I have it playing continuously now, will leave to settle and see if things improve, fingers crossed.
If you are a thinking a bit more running in would help, I’d recommend using the Tellurium Q system disc cd (or download) there’s an excellent burn in track and system wake up track.
It might just speed up the run in time for you and the frequency sweeps on the test tracks may reach the parts that normal music can’t! Just a thought.
Just thought I would update since the system has had chance to fully bed in over the last few weeks. The sibilance issue has “gone away”. It was brought on by the 300 which I have had serviced and DR’d. It took far longer than I expected to burn in and stabilise, however that was only part of the problem…
Now I am going to be very honest… I think my ears took some time to adapt to the new presentation which contains a lot more HF information. I ended up hearing sibilance in other systems, on the kitchen Muso, on headphones… The 300DR can now finely resolve natural sibilance in certain vocals, initially to a point that I was not familiar or comfortable with. The brain has now recalibrated to this - I can still hear sibilance where it exists on a recording, but the system sounds better than ever… a lot better!
Am I completely insane? Almost certainly after 30 years in this hobby. Still, I consider myself very fortunate to wrestle with such First World problems…
What you write is entirely reasonable IMO.
With HiFi such things are a combination of genuine run-in effects - and ‘brain-learning’ associated with how we cognise and use information.
People can have a simple idea that they have ears that essentially just ‘hear things’ and they themselves sit inside their head perceiving what the unchanging ear-funnel feeds them - I’ll admit I’ve encountered people for which this seems true, but they are the minority.
In practice (from my experience) our mind first wrestles with ‘something different’ we perceive as welling-up a positive of negative immediate emotional response we react to. But I’ve certainly found over time the mind prompts the brain to put-in the new neural-paths (or so it seems) to help with what has our attention over a period of time and we then extract more and new information. Then we make sense and use of we did not have any previous experience of dealing with.
Part of the fun in and of music is that it can grow a new person on the other end of it! 
DB.
I’ve many times read about running in Naim kit, but mostly it hadn’t been a problem that I have had for whatever reason, so I tend to discount it myself.
But recently I bought a pre-owned 2013 SuperUniti from my local dealer. It was a customer trade in apparently. When I first turned it on it sounded dreadful, all chesty bass and screechy middle with no low bass and no top. I left it on and used it for some hours for several days, mainly on Radio 3 and it suddenly started to come alive on the third day. It now (just seven days since I unpacked it) sounds excellent and much more like the SuperUniti I already had in another system here. I think this SuperUniti may have been turned off for quite a long time, maybe several years.
Reading this thread with this recent experience in mind I was certain that it would turn out to be the 300DR running in. Anyway I’m glad the sibilance has been vanquished now!
Best
David
The turning point in my case was a visit to a friend who has a very well sorted SME/Conrad Johnson/Tannoy horn system with which I am quite familiar. It is as you might expect, a completely different sound to a Naim/Neat set such as mine. I was surprised to hear the same sibilance on the same recordings! The newly Dr’d and still raw 300 had set my brain on a path of fixation, without my knowledge or agreement…
I would also say that after each visit to this particular system, if I come back immediately to listen my own set at home, it tends to sound a bit off. There is something fundamental in the way the big Tannoys drive a room, which makes my set in my room sound a bit forced initially. After an hour or so of “recalibration” this goes away completely and I am left with the idea that the Tannoy system, for all its strengths, lacked some of the direct, punchy and downright engaging sound I am now enjoying. Which is great from several perspectives, not least cash and WAF!
It is never with conscious agreement - we ride atop a subconscious beast that knows how to do all that while we are convinced we are in charge.
IMO there is always a learning-curve of greater appreciation of all aesthetic-artistic things to which we are initially drawn. Back in my teen youth, music was the one thing I encountered that had the ability to ‘stop’ my mind’s inner-chat and noise. It is now one of the factors I always look for - to absorb my attention.
DB.
I am so happy to have found this thread! I’ve experienced the same problem—which started when I had my 300 upgraded to DR. That was one year ago. I tried all the same “solutions” mentioned by others here.
I now believe the DR upgrade is the issue, however the sssssss’s have not gone away even with one year of burn-in.
My problem however was “dirty ssssss’s” — the excess sibilants had a distorted and raspy nature rather than being clean sounding (if that makes sense). Upon following the recommendation of Chris West of A/V Options (who upgraded my NAP300) I am listening to a loaner set of NACA5s that are 14.5 feet length and deep cryo’d. They replaced an 11.5ft. set of non-cryo’d NACA5s so I didn’t expect the speaker cable to solve my problem. However I am very surprised that, while the sibilants are still more prominent than with the non-DRd amp, they are now clean and no longer “raspy” after replacing my NACA5 set. The many improvements the DR’d NAP300 brings now outweigh the issue with the excess sibilants, but I do feel this is a design issue with the DR circuitry rather than a set/up issue.
I found the SL speaker cable removed all tendency to edge-distortions like can happen around sibilance.
But a lot of money if you find a way to achieve the same performance needed another way.
DB.
I think it’s easy to forget that some sibilance in speech and song is natural. I remember, after listening to a system that, to my ears, over-emphasised sibilants, I found myself at a concert in a large church given by a professional choir. Out of interest, I closed my eyes, pretended I was listening to hifi and, yes, there were definite, almost excessive sibilants particularly amongst some of the soprano soloists. So, in the rather artificial environment of listening to a home hifi and focussing on the sound, it is easy to notice sibilance that might not seem so pronounced in a live setting. Microphone placement and the general skills of the recording engineer(s) play a role in this too. So, whilst a system in which the “ssssss” frequently grate on the listener may well need attention, one completely without sibilance on any voices in any recording is unlikely to be reproducing the music as the musicians intended. Some sort of balance is required and personal taste (and individual hearing) may play a role in where that balance should be struck.
Roger
Interesting to hear your comments, it is too easy to dismiss the cable as a variable, I have had my A5 tucked away under floor for at least 15 years and only just thinking about SL as a next step. I would say in my case, initially the sibilance was quite pronounced and “dirty” - it sounded harsh and truncated as you describe. Over time the sound has extended, to the point that the Sssssssses are finely resolved. For me this is “accurate” for the reasons that PeakMan points out.
Hi Freddie,
I like your description. Tannoy DCs can sound superb. I love listening to a variety of systems. I would not directly rank them, they each create superb music in subtly different ways; vive le difference!
M
So true.
Ditto.
And subtleties in here as well. There is a lot of choral music that I like the technical challenge of singing that I would never listen to at home; and, other pieces that I would listen to at a concert that I wouldn’t listen to on my system.
With much music I find that things I like immediately I grow tired of fairly quickly. It is that which takes more time to truly appreciate that more often stands the test of time for me.
Hi Rosami,
It may not be relevant for you but sibilance in my system was a combination of sources. One which may be relevant to you is:
I find edge and associated sibilance SOOOO annoying, just drags me out of the music.
M
I agree …but:
For my system I built up a list of ‘usual suspects’. I then went and listened to these on friends systems. The underlying ssss was there, but my system at that time was handling them badly.
I think this is where bake offs can really help, you can get a feel for whether you are allowing yourself to be unrealistic in your expectations.
My Naim setup was never at that level but in ten years journey with Naim, there were few moves which introduced sibilance and caused listening fatigue in my setup.
First one was when I moved from original SN to SN2. At first it sounded edgy and harsh and I even regretted ever upgrading, but it all went away with proper burn-in and in the end it was probably the best upgrade I made in those ten years.
Second move was when I tried Hi-Line in my setup, it just didn’t work. Way too bright and harsh between Naim DAC and SN2.
Third move was when I changed my Musicline Naim power block to Furutech e-TP60. I listened to this for over two weeks and had problems locating the cause for listening fatigue and sibilant sound. In the end I switched back to the old power block and it helped.
Fourth case was change of USB cable from PC to my USB-bridge. I changed the good old Chord SilverPlus to TeddyPardo USB-cable which I later found out, didn’t have proper shielding. Once again it took me a while to find the culprit but changing back to Chord solved this one.