Tone controls - old school liability, or sonic salvation?

I have actually heard greater differences in the electronics of phono preamps, preamps and power amps. A well designed control stage is only one stage, and has zero gain in the flat setting. IMO the well designed tone control circuit does not audibly degrade the signal path. (a lesser circuit would degrade the signal) Two examples come to mind, the Pioneer SA 7100, 8100, and 9100 integrated amps with stepped bass and treble controls (resistor network controls, not the standard pots) and Luxman's linear frequency control which "uptilts" or "downtilts" the response curve, also a stepped resistor network. The linear frequency control does not introduce any additional harmonic distortion, according to Luxman.

 

I am so old, I remember simple "tone" controls on old suitcase record players, haha! Those are real tone controls. Most guitars have at least one simple tone control, and I use it. I think whatever anyone prefers, the purer signal path is to be respected. The objective of the audio experience is in the truth of music reproduction and the also the intended sound of the artist and sound engineers.

The credo of bass and treble adjustment is to not go too crazy with it. If the bass must be turned up to 12, then there is a problem with the system, or the listener has a case of bass-O-phobia! There are some people out there who are professed haters of midrange.

 

You could try this:

http://www.amazon.com/Behringer-FBQ800-BEHRINGER-MINIFBQ/dp/B000MJ406Y

Very cheap, probably not brilliant, but will give you an impression of what tone controls can do.

I use a Behringer DEQ2496. Much more complicated. Does its work in digital but has an ADC and DAC which seem OK but unlikely to be brilliant (I used it with a turntable and found that if there was any damage to the sound, it was outweighed by the improvement from EQ). It also has only XLR connections.

 

I used to do this with all the CD's (ripped to drive) that were overly bright via Waves plug ins. I'd spend hours on it, trying to get things perfect. Honestly, for me, it took a lot of the fun out of listening to music. By the time I thought I had it, I didn't want to listen to that disc anymore. When I would listen to it again months, or even years later...it sounded awful.

Now, when spinning records...by the time I figured out what the offending freqs. were, the next song would need something completely different! Before you know it, the record was over and I hadn't really listended to the music...I was listening to my system.

Unfortunately, I do not have the ear you have. I wish I did! But alas, I'm not a mastering engineer. It's just much easier for me to turn it down a click and enjoy playing records.

 

Most eq's suck. Most of us haven't been able to turn knobs on a really good eq.

 

Man oh man am I out of touch with "modern gear".
I know some equipment has been made to a lower price by leaving out certain options but I had no idea higher end equipment had removed the tone controls completely.
Every single piece of gear I own, modern or vintage, high end or not so high, has the ability to control base and treble (except for the clock radio)
Most of my gear can control base, treble and mid range and some of it gets out of control with the controls.
My newest piece of gear is not more than 5-6 years old either so I didn't think I was that far removed.
I guess I better get to the audio lounge and do some browsing in order to reeducate myself on newer trends.

 

Pay no attention to the naysayers. Let them live without tone controls. I won't. Like I said earlier in this thread. I won't own an integrated or receiver without at least bass and treble controls. Part of why I like my Marantz and Yamaha gear. While the Yamaha RX-V990 is coming up on 20 years old, the Marantz integrateds are all pretty new (less than three years old and newer).

 

I like Treble and Bass controls. Dont Always use them but its nice to have them there, esp for the odd older recording or for the odd 'unofficial' recording.

 

I have done a total about face on this topic. Started off with the idea that I needed dual 32 band EQ with pink noise and RTA software to make the perfect "house curve".
Now I have the EQ out of the system and the tone controls set on defeat, which really does make a slight but noticeable improvement in SQ.
I will say that vinyl is much smoother than digital and significantly decreases the need for tone controls- as do full range speakers.

 

I bet it goes to "11."

 

Not only do I like tone controls, I use a mid-60's Sherwood S-9900A integrated amp that also has a selector switch that lets me choose between listening to the right or left channel only thru both speakers, or reversed left and right channels or mixed mono. The right-left channel option may sound pointless, but recently I was watching a broadcast of the recent economic summit in St. Petersburg (with a live band, no less), and they had different translations coming from each stereo channel, so it's come in handy.

 

Absolutely.
"Bright" is 2.5 to 4Khz, room reflections + human ear sensitivity.
Treble controls are 8Khz and up but usually with a generous shelf.
Effective at killing the sound, not the brightness.

 

If something is too bright, I am going to find a better source or live with it.

 

That's just an additional cost to add something that, at best...even in the hands of someone who actually knows what they're doing, isn't sufficient to do what it's supposed to accomplish.

Graphic EQs...particularly the 2 or 3 band variety...are one step forward and two steps back.

 

One reason I play records instead of playing, recording, mixing, producing, or mastering music myself is that the people who do those things as a profession actually have a f@cking clue what they're doing, as opposed to a deeply appreciative but talentless dunderhead such as myself. So no tone controls for me, thanks. Even if some albums don't sound as great as they could, oh well, c'est la vie, that's the way they were made by the artists who made them.

Also, I do not enjoy constantly fiddling with my stereo all the time. I prefer to invest a bunch of research and effort up front into getting it set up as well as possible in this godawful room and then just leave it the hell alone and listen to music until the next time I make a major change, which isn't too often.

 

Wait...don't you EQ, normalize, etc etc etc all your needle drops?

 

Just a very select few. That's not the same as using tone controls because I am using equalizers in the software.

Tone controls are just too crude. For that matter, your average 10 band equalizer is too, but you can make better adjustments on it. They problem with tone and regular band EQ is that they introduce phase distortion. For that reason, I like to also use an FFT filter.

Having said that, I am often amazed at what I can bring out with a 20-band EQ. You can add space and depth in an otherwise "flat" recording. The trick is to A/B your work with the course to make sure you aren't changing the tonality. I suppose it doesn't sound like fun to most people, but I enjoy the process.

 

I'd certainly be interested in an audiophile-quality integrated with a relatively simple 5-band equaliser a là the old Audio Control 520 - can't recall the exact frequency centers, but it was low bass, "bookshelf hump" (100 hz-ish), vocal band (800-1,000 hz), the dreaded brightness zone (2-4 khz) and treble air (upwards of 12 khz). Very useful if you can discern what's wrong with the sound of a wonky mastering. Or, turn your Bose 301s into Harbeth P3s!*





*Joke.

 

Hurry up !!!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Audio-Contr...-Control-System-Subsonic-Filter-/181332402281

 

Hoo boy was I wrong about the frequency centers. These would be useless for taming brightness.

 

I tame brightness with the 1, 2, sometimes 4 khz control on my 10-band graphic eq. And since it has a remote I can do it from the listening position. But I seldom do it thanx to the quality of most of my recordings.

 

Tone controls are absolutely essential for my car's audio system, but I no longer use them for my turntable.

 

People can't handle tone-controls. Treble,bass,loudness settings always at "ten".

See this all the time.