Loudness - Why has the industry stopped producing amplifiers with this feature any longer?

Schiit Loki.
This 4 band tone control is marvelous. I use it as a loudness switch for low volume evening listening. For some harsh recordings I tweak the mid-high and high freq controls - but very infrequently. So once set, I just switch it in or out as needed. My Manley Stingray integrated amp allows me to do this with the remote.

I hate people who hate tone controls! Not because I disagree with them, but because they have ruined the audio world for the rest of us. They proclaim Tone Controls = BAD!! Ummm... but there’s this thing they invented call a SWITCH..... and you and just switch them out of the audio path.... and don’t get me started on "oh but that switch is in the signal path and it degrades the sound too..." No! It does’t.
As for the Loudness circuit, there is very sound psychoacoustic reason why this is a fabulous idea! Our hearing loses bass at low volumes. Gee, why can’t we have a circuit that increases bass as we turn the volume down? That would make quiet music infinitely MORE ENJOYABLE. Isn’t that what we want? Music to be more enjoyable?? Well thanks for ruining it for all of us you tone haters! Oh... and Yes, variable loudness is much better than a fixed amount.

So long as you have a variable loudness and variable volume control, this is a very useful control to have.  I'm afraid it was sacrificed to the "less is more" philosophy, along with (in come occassions) balance controls.  Purist, perhaps, but consumer-unfriendly.

They proclaim Tone Controls = BAD!! Ummm... but there’s this thing they invented call a SWITCH..... and you and just switch them out of the audio path.... and don’t get me started on "oh but that switch is in the signal path and it degrades the sound too..." No! It does’t.

The more transparent your equipment is, the more you hear things like switches. That in itself is a pain because if you have that transparency, then you have to pay a lot more for the switches you get so that they don't cause audible degradation.


Putting myself through engineering school I worked as a service technician repairing consumer electronics. Even when the stuff was new, the tone control defeat switch was one of those parts that was a source of failure- mostly out of disuse, just like the tape monitor switch. I had to assume that as the product ages, such switches will become more problematic.


Funny thing though, once my own system got to a certain level of competency, I didn't miss the tone controls. Even at low volumes the bass was perfectly audible.

Maybe vendors would rather have people have to buy more new stuff when things don’t sound quite right which is almost always in audiophile land.