In praise of Tone Controls

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by JoeSmo, Apr 4, 2018.

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  1. apman55

    apman55 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sandy OR US
    My listening room has some standing wave issues. Fought it for a long time, added significant room treatments but couldn't get it under control until I got a DSpeaker dual Core 2.0. Has a parametric EQ, DAC, and bass management system, balanced and RCA in/outputs. It is one of the best purchases I have made in all these years.
    So ya I am a big believer in tone controls.
    I say whatever you can use to get your "perfect sound" is what should be used, isn't that what it is all about?
     
    Fishoutofwater and Magic like this.
  2. Magic

    Magic I'm just this guy, ya know?

    Location:
    Franklin TN
    The high end shops that I went to back in the 70s would tout not using tone controls. That everything should be listened to flat which would be truer to the recording. That if the equipment was good enough tone controls weren't necessary. If it had tone controls you never ever used them. You could buy an equalizer but only to make the room acoustics flat. Everything had to be FLAT. Anything else and you weren't a true audiophile. Of course all the equipment adds some color to the sound and no two speaker brands are going to sound alike so there is a certain amount of subjectivity involved. Speaking strictly for myself I prefer to be able to adjust it to what I like. IMHO I always thought it was a odd thing to get hung up about.
     
  3. Doctor Fine

    Doctor Fine "So Hip It Would Blister Your Brain"

    I am a mastering grade playback installer.
    The ONE problem that EQ can deal with in MOST rooms is the "hump" that adjoining walls make in the lowest registers.
    So all my protest AGAINST EQ are null and void when it comes to getting a true response below say 300hZ.
    You really need some bass down there but have to realize that most home listening rooms have various "humps" where they blow out the response with a "boom" that needs to be cut.
    So IF you are going for a true bass system you will most likely IN MY EXPERIENCE need a parametric EQ to CUT the bass where your WALLS are blowing out the bass.
    Once you get the bass right suddenly your TREBLE will sound better.
    Don't ask ME.
    I didn't invent acoustic phenomenon.
    I'm just an installer and have observed this phenom over and over.
    So...notch out YOUR room HUMP and extend YOUR bass and live happily ever after.
    FYIW.
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2018
    Magic likes this.
  4. JoeSmo

    JoeSmo SL1200 lover.... Thread Starter

    Location:
    Maidstone
    Some sweeping generalisms here; ‘most’, ‘glorified Loudness buttons’ and ‘cheaply constructed and limited’. You’d really have to drill down into detail to be able to draw these conclusions and would need to listen to a myriad of amps too.

    I have no experience of tone controls from the 70’s or 80’s (but have read they were pretty awful) however, their implementation on modern amps such as Creeks Evolution 100a and Luxman 590ax are fabulous, and, with the option of going to ‘straight line’ on both should I want to. For me this is the best of both worlds and if the trade-off is that ‘straight-line’ won’t be as good as an amp without any tone controls, so be it.
     
    augustwest likes this.
  5. Night Rider

    Night Rider Well-Known Member

    Location:
    United Kingdom
    When I bought a new amp last year, I had tone controls on my check list. I almost always tweak (very slightly) them to obtain a resulting sound to my liking. There is also a source direct button, but I find some recordings sound slightly flat when I use this.

    Perhaps someone could comment though on why so many amps nowadays have tone controls for "Bass" and "Treble" but nothing for the "Mid-range" ? If I remember rightly, the older amps fairly often had a "Mid-range" knob ?

    Is it due to cost ? Fashion trends ? Electronic reasons ?
     
    punkmusick and Magic like this.
  6. weavzy

    weavzy Needle Dropper

    As I said...not all recordings are created equal.
     
    SandAndGlass and Fishoutofwater like this.
  7. Melvin

    Melvin Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    I think this is exactly why the Schiit Loki Mini with its 4 knobs and bypass switch appealed to me. Pretty simple for a phool like me who hasn't a clue how to use the more sophisticated variety. I like my Loki especially for headphone use.
     
    mr clean likes this.
  8. Sugar Man

    Sugar Man Forum Resident

    To the OP:

    I guess I was wrong. Your system obviously can't sound better to you because your "cheaply constructed" Luxman 590ax with its "glorified loudness buttons" must be detracting from the flawless neutral sound of the master masterers. I can only imagine what those awesome meters are doing to the sound also. Moral of the story. Never trust your ears, because others know better!

    Luxman - L-590AxII Integrated Amplifier | Shop Music Direct
     
    riverrat likes this.
  9. Hubert jan

    Hubert jan Forum Resident

    Anyone opposed to tone control should study tonecontrols.
    Simple circuits, always a "flat" adjustment to set.
    A bypass is comfortabel but not really necessary.
    Whoever began this nonsense campaign against tone controls knows NOTHING about electronics, even not about the most simple circuits.
    Some hifi writers, reviewers say something and the whole world is going to believe it, because the innocent not technical inclined music lovers cling to those goeroe's, most of them scammers paid by the industry and seldom if never real electronics engineers.

    With tone control you can correct within limits the differences between recordings and the tasteless equalizing some mastering people imply.
    Without tone control you are stuck with the taste of the recording "engineer", mastering "engineer".
     
  10. I listen to music at low volume a lot. When listening at low volumes, I don't know how a reasonable frequency balance can be acquired without some bass and treble boost. As Fletcher and Munson confirmed many years ago. Fletcher–Munson curves - Wikipedia
    Equal-loudness contour - Wikipedia
    I think that the "loudness compensation" buttons found on a lot of mid-fi receivers typically overdo it a bit. But I often use bass and treble knobs to round out the frequency spectrum when listening to music at low volume.
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2018
    riverrat likes this.
  11. Arliss Renwick

    Arliss Renwick Forum Resident

    Location:
    Vancouver, BC
    I’m having it both ways. My home setup is pretty dialed, so no need for tone controls there. But I also have a little audio-technica TT at work, and I wasn’t 100% percent happy with the sound I was getting, so I bought the Schiit Loki. Does the job!
     
    mr clean likes this.
  12. phish

    phish Jack Your Body

    Location:
    Biloxi, MS, USA
    All it takes is an E to make that bitter better.
     
  13. Solitaire1

    Solitaire1 Carpenters Fan

    Is that like "Who can turn a cap into a cape? Who can turn a man into a mane? But my friend Sam was just the same."
     
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  14. hesson11

    hesson11 Forum Resident

    I respect your experience and your point of view, Doc, but I'm guessing if you don't listen to recordings with "garbage" sound quality, you don't listen much to Casals, Furtwangler, Toscanini—even Bernstein, Richter, etc.—or any of thousands of other classical recordings of virtually all eras that have less than primo sound quality. I don't use tone controls to compensate for listening-room acoustics or to compensate for playback equipment, but because much of the classical music I listen to benefits from (usually) subtle EQ adjustment.
    -Bob
     
  15. Solitaire1

    Solitaire1 Carpenters Fan

    Kynl wrote the following as part of a post:

    As I previously mentioned, I use the equalizer on my portable to compensate for the way my headphones color the sound. Since it involves headphones, the room acoustics are not an issue for me. The adjustment I make is based on my casual perception of the sound, rather than based on a scientifically rigorous test (let's see...1812 Overture...the cannon's bass is off by -0.5db...). Simply put, if I notice too much bass/highs I make an adjustment.

    However, it also depends on the music. I don't base it on a single song but several songs based on my experience, songs that I can tell are off when I hear them. If that was the case I might make an incorrect adjustment. As an example, if I based my adjustment only on the song "Funky Town" by The Chipmunks (that is a real song) I'd have to drop the treble as low as possible because the song contains an almost-painful, ear-piercing amount of highs (I have to quickly crank down the volume. I no longer have it on my player for that reason.).
     
  16. fishcane

    fishcane Dirt Farmer

    Location:
    Finger Lakes,NY
    Set them for the heart of the sun and everything will be just fine...
     
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  17. Vignus

    Vignus Digital Vinylist

    Location:
    Italy
    This thread helped me understand the evil in tone controls. To recap: All things must be heard the way they were recorded. Unless your system is garbage or you have hearing issues, or you simply don't understand a thing about sound.
    Got it, personal taste is not allowed, got to enjoy things as they were created.
    I'm also going to dump my tv set and buy one that has no brightness, color, or contrast control: I suppose things are also meant to be seen as they were recorded and broadcasted unless you... see above.
    Not to mention what I'll do next time I see someone adding salt to a dish. Reading a book that has been translated or adding a pillow when I sleep in a hotel bed. And my next posts will be in Italian
     
  18. Doctor Fine

    Doctor Fine "So Hip It Would Blister Your Brain"

    Absolutely WRONG.
    You would be amazed how great EVERYTHING sounds on a perfectly balanced system.
    Have you ever heard a clean version of a Caruso transcription?
    I listen all day ten hours a day to even YouTube videos.
    EVERYTHING sounds amazing.
    The only things that sound like **** on my system are some of the horrible "remastered" over compressed, ruined garbage that are being foisted on folks with bad setups---as if THIS is better than just a clean copy of the original.
    I collect old vinyl, MONO, you name it.
    Boy you guys some of you just dont get it do you?
    When I had a ****** system I too would use tone controls---there is no shame in it.
    But if you would build a clean sounding full range (or as close to full range as you personally care to put up with---they DO get large, ha ha) THEN you would not have any band aids in the line.
     
    Dave likes this.
  19. Doctor Fine

    Doctor Fine "So Hip It Would Blister Your Brain"

    No.
    Wrong.
    I have a CALIBRATED monitor.
    NOW I don't use ANY tone controls.
    Still don't get it?
     
  20. Doctor Fine

    Doctor Fine "So Hip It Would Blister Your Brain"

    Look it doesnt matter to me what you guys prefer to do in the privacy of your own homes.
    But if you are on a mastering site devoted to the higher aspirations of our hobby then please try to understand how to build a better sounding system.
    I lived with crummy hifi for years before I could afford the better things in life.
    Then as I studied more and went to more training I learned a lot of ideas about how to fix a system for clean playback.
    If you don't WANT clean playback and you dont WANT to hear the original mix that is your preference.
    But as a friend of mine said when he heard one of my early screwed up systems "Hey, I recorded Steve Stills on that recording---and it did NOT sound like that. If I had wanted Steve to have all that bass tone I would have RECORDED it that way."
    The guy was really pissed.
    He was the recording engineer and was telling me I wasnt hearing it correctly.
    I FIXED my set and suddenly I could hear the background vocals TOO.
    So do what you want.
    I am simply trying to fight for the side of this great hobby where we endeavor to hear things as close to the way the engineer meant it to be heard as possible.
    That is MY game.
    Whatever pleases you is totally your privilege.
     
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  21. JoeSmo

    JoeSmo SL1200 lover.... Thread Starter

    Location:
    Maidstone
    .....still doesn’t address the issue that not all listening rooms are created equal. It’s great your setup is immaculate, I envy you and I’m glad for you.
    However, there’s a band of audiophiles out there as passionate as me, have spent thousands and can’t get their system to ‘click’ for a myriad of reasons and I’m proposing that sometimes a step in a different direction can put a huge smile back on your face as you listen to your cherished music collection.
    Now, I have very broad tastes in music and I can tell you once I’d set the tone controls for my favourite album everything else I listened too was also perfect for my music room ( and ears, to be fair)
    This proves to me engineers work to an amazingly high standard and listening rooms don’t.
     
  22. Pythonman

    Pythonman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Florida
    Highest praise for tone controls and tone stacks for my Marshall amps! As for stereo listening not so much any more. Count me as one of the guys who find preamps/integrated amps etc with defeatable tone controls or with tone controls set to “flat” not sounding the same, not projecting the same natural weight and depth nor image sizes as preamps etc that have no tone controls. YMMV.
     
  23. manxman

    manxman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Isle of Man
    My amplifier (the quadraphonic Bang & Olufsen Beomaster 6000) needs the bass turned up almost to the full to play rock satisfyingly. The odd thing is that I also own their more basic quadraphonic amplifier, the Beomaster 3400, and that renders bass normally. I have a feeling that they assumed that anybody who sprang for the more expensive option would probably listen to jazz, folk and classical (acoustic music sound spectacular) rather than rock. What's even odder is how much of a difference it makes, as I use attentuators to return the amp output to line level before feeding my active speakers.
     
  24. ljubisa_bu

    ljubisa_bu New Member

    Location:
    Serbia
    I changed my headphones setup since I realized my ears are not working equally. Basically the left one is compromised, maybe because of the inflammation I had. So now if someone even talks standing left of me I hear them less :/
    Hearing is individual, as well as the room acoustics so the setup that is OK for one person might not work as well for another.
     
    fogalu likes this.
  25. Vignus

    Vignus Digital Vinylist

    Location:
    Italy
    A clean system, in a perfect room, with perfect hearing capabilities, playing a perfectly recorded album, at 7 in the morning... Do you get it?
     
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