Tone controls - old school liability, or sonic salvation?

Depends on the system. On lower end systems and at lower volumes tone controls can be fine & useful. On systems that have been matched and set up in a room with some thought, tone control changes start to sound weird. Like when you were little and sprinkled sugar on your cereal. You progress to the point where the 'enhancement 'starts to become obvious. And not pleasurable anymore.

 

Oh, much older than that!

 

So, if you tweak the EQ or use tone controls it's basically because your system just isn't good enough?

 

No: don't equate 'good' with low-mid-high level systems. All can be 'good.' Of course there are high end owners that swear by tone controls from what I've read. (Never met anybody who thinks that though) The need to use tone control can be a lot of factors, personal preferences (obviously), limitations in the room and so on. Just met a guy who has a really good moderate system but its in a room with his TV plus the family uses it. So he has limitations on configuring the room with its furniture etc. So he sometimes tweaks controls a bit. Nothing wrong with that - its his ears that have to be pleased!

 

If you haven't heard dub with the bass on maximum, you haven't heard dub.

 

I don't like them and don't use them. The preamps and integrated amps that I own don't have them anyway. I usually find that people who use tone controls tend to turn up the bass too much.

Scott

 

Er, "too much" for what?

 

You mean 'felt.' You haven't felt dub.

 

Although I've found tone controls/an equalizer to be of use, I use them sparingly. I tend to use them to only to compensate for the headphones I'm using. As an example, I used to use a set of Koss Portapros with my iPod Classic but I found that they had too much bass for comfort. So I used the bass reducer on my iPod Classic to reduce the bass to a more balanced level. Other than that, I tend to just listen my music as is. Due to this, I'm always looking for a set of headphones with a flat response (no emphasis from the headphones themselves).

 

Good response Raunchnroll. My stereo system has evolved over the decades to where, for my ears, I can call it a 'reference' system, it's that 'honest' when I play music. Now back in the day I used to use the Tone controls to blow my tweeters out to Montrose or Sticky Fingers....Bass almost all the way up, treble, like salt, all the way up....GIVE ME TREBLE!!!!!!!!!!!! But my system is so well balanced now, and I've learned how to 'tune' the placement of the speakers to the room their in, that all I need is a bit of a bass boost (2db@63hz) to get my Mirage OMD28's singing where they should. Treble is flat. With this setup I can easily tell what are good masterings and which ones are poor, or just bad. I used to use the t controls for every album I played, but that was way before I learned slowly over the years how to 'synergize' my system.
Case in point, this past week I picked up the newest 200 gram pressing of 'Axis' in Mono mastered by Bernie. It sounds really good but there was, to my ears, a lack of fullness in the bass freqs. So I went to my trusty 'Classic Records' 200 gram mono pressing and whammo, there it was, about a 2 db increase in the bass freqs, which surprised me as I really like Bernies LP masterings, but this one just sounds 'thin' compared to the Classic Records version, so now I have to keep that one as my reference-bummer though as the recent copy is on translucent Orange vinyl and it looks just stunning! But that's how well my current system is now tuned, things like this stick out like a sore thumb where as decades ago I would have just turned the bass control up. I could still do it now but as anybody whose done it knows, when you finally get that 'tuned in' sound you don't want to mess with it.
the beave

 

In general I like to keep my jams neutral for better or worse, but, man when an ENTIRE catalog of my favorite artist is (RE)mastered too brightly (The Monkees) it gets me thinking...

 

Given we're in a forum with people who spend 80% of their non-working waking lives tweaking their systems (not to mention the cumulative discretionary income of their ten closest neighbours on their listening ecosystems), I hesistate to consider anyone who wants to turn a knob up or down a notch to change the overall tone of his/her system's sound obsessive.

 

I hadn't been aware of the disdain for tone controls until I read the thread "Tone Conrols Etc., anyone still use them, if so why?" http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/tone-controls-etc-any-one-use-them-if-so-why.422911/

I recall one comment which I think was from Steve (correct me if I'm wrong!) summing it up to "It sounds how it sounds", meaning your system as is without tone controls. That baffled me since IMO nothing sounds how it sounds, every piece of equipment influences the sonic character along with the particular pressing or mastering of the music. I for one couldn't live without tone controls, but if others don't need them that's great, enjoy the music however you best like it.

 

Same here...MF A5 Int Amp - no tone controls.

It's not that I think tone controls are 'evil' - just not necessary, but then I have a type of 'cheat' for bass as I run a manually integrated subwoofer. If the bass seems...ah...anemic...I just goose the sub volume a bit.

Other than that, 'as is'.

 

EQ settings are useless to me. What...are you going to find some magic setting that works on every random song that plays? Plus, most affect too broad of a frequency range.

 

"Er, "too much" for what?"

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Excessive bass, tubby, boomy, un-natural sounding, that's what I meant. People tend to use tone controls when they are not needed. I hear it right away as soon as I walk into the room.

Scott

 

Recordings are just that: recordings. Facsimiles of performances. They all have sonic variables inherent from where, how, and when they were recorded. Who recorded them, who mastered the final product, and so on. The list is huge.

I found that, when my main system got up to where I liked it, almost all recordings fall into a general 'good sounding' core. A few sound more distant, other are a little bass shy, while others are brighter, others rolled off on top. Some sound like the old or poor recordings they are, some sound like they're 'in the room.'

In the end I realized very few recordings are truly poor. People in the industry tried to make the best of what they had to work with, generally, and it shows when you get a nice honest system. The so-called worst recordings are still enjoyable. None of the technical variables built into the recording media you're playing back can be compensated for by tone controls. What controls do is adjust the sound to ones own preferences. I think the key is in learning how to listen to recordings.

I've somehow taught my ears to 'master' the recording a bit. For example, Piper At The Gates of Dawn, an original UK stereo, is bass shy compared to most rock recordings. Yet I still 'hear' the bass with a certain perception of fullness as I listen to it. I wish more bass had been mastered in the final tape so it was naturally in the record. But I found artificially enhancing the low end on my tone control system did not make the album any more fun to listen to. Nor did it approximate realistic sounding bass. It just gained an odd bass 'hump' that started to detract from listening. For me.

 

Depends. I find the tone controls on my old Kenwood KR 9600 to be both helpful and defeat-able. I also find all the interlinked switches and knobs on this nearly 40 year receiver lead to many possibilities for channels suddenly dropping out, requiring exercise of said controls to get signal moving again. The usual suspect is a 'mic in' switch attached to a front panel microphone input that would have been better off out of the design altogether. In addition to the potential degradation quality of the signal—tone controls in most vintage receivers usually mess things up as regards distortion—there's the issue of more things than will break down in time. In any case, digital tone controls are the wave of the present and can offer more that's good about tone controls and less of what's not. If you know what you're doing you can get good results with a parametric equalizer. If you don't know what you're doing you'll probably have lots of fun 'til something blows up.

 

I had this model in the mid 90s,after using the Pink noise and mic my system never sounded better...until I started reading how bad EQ was.

 

Don't use them ever as there is no need.

 

Happy 4th of July to you and Yours Steve!
the beave

You must be as bored as I am! lol. Wife went camping and I'm here in Seattle at 93 degrees with my putty cat, and he's sleeping.

 

Listen. On many CD's (let's say T.Rex Singles A's and B's as an example) any degradation in sound due to the use of a Graphic Equaliser is hugely offset by the pleasure experienced when you reduce the mid range hump and boosted treble. With Marcs guitar and voice no longer in your face the sense of depth returns along with the rest of the band. Try it with a software eq, say a scoop from 1 to 4k centered on 2.5k. Try a 3db reduction here and 1db from 4k and upwards. Then try an increase or decrease depending on what you hear. On a poorly mastered CD you will improve the listenability. Remember, they're your CD's and you have to listen to them. No one on the Forum need know and I doubt Steve's going to come banging on your door.

 

We likely agree, then. But I was trying to suggest that it's too much bass for you, and for me. Not too much for whoever apparently likes it that way. Not everyone, not even every audiophile, is concerned about music sounding as it was apparently intended (on that particular master or pressing) by the musician/engineer/producer/label etc., and that's without taking into account target audio system, quality control, hearing loss, changing room dynamics, etc. So they like to make simple (and I agree with our host - too simple) adjustments. You may be offended by that desire - I'm not.