Preamps ... no bass or treble control?

The simpler the path, the purer the signal thus less distortion in sound. Most high end pre-amps do not have controls. The sound is tweaked by room acoustics, speaker placement,cabling, as well as other high quality sources.

true fidelity is in essence staying true to the original music, thus adjusting certain frequency levels is the opposite of what pure hifi is going for. On a side note i would highly recommend the rouge gear but have had nothing but bad experiences with adcom, i think that better can be had for the same amount of money. How much are you looking to spend?

I never used bass and treble even when my componets had them, it just never seemed possible to jigger one sound without molesting the whole signature, I would say for sure that when you get into mid and hi fi that tone controls are not normal to see on equipment

Staying true to the music would also mean that it was recorded direct to disc, without a mixing board, overdubs, level changes before the master, etc. Think Sheffield lab products.
Now, almost everything else has been manipulated in some degree by the recording engineer. I prefer tone controls to tame harsh treble, for example. My McIntosh C22 re-issue from the 90's has tone controls, but in the 12 o'clock position, they are out of the circuit.

Best of both worlds?

Hpims
....When tone controls are at 12 o'clock ....can one generally expext the tone controls to be out of the circuit....or is that an extra feature on your Mac