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We give up perspective to avoid tone controls

Hi Everyone,

While most of my thread starters are meant to be fun, I realize this one is downright provocative, so I'm going to try extra hard to be civil. 

One thing that is implicit in the culture of "high end audio" is the disdain for any sort of electronic equalization. The culture disdains the use of anything other than a volume control. Instead we attempt to change everything to avoid this. Speakers, speaker cables, amplifiers, and power cords. We'll shovel tens of thousands of dollars of gear in and out of our listening room to avoid them. 

Some audiophiles even disdain any room acoustic treatments. I heard one brag, after saying he would never buy room treatments: "I will buy a house or not based on how good the living room is going to sound." 

What's weird to me, is how much equalization is done in the mastering studio, how different pro speakers may sound from what you have in your listening room, and how much EQ happens within the speakers themselves. The RIAA circuits in all phono preamps IS a complicated three state EQ, we're OK with that, but not tone controls? 

What attracts us to this mind set? Why must we hold ourselves to this kind of standard? 

Best,


E
erik_squires
mikexxyz
66 posts
 
REW has a function that develops a recommended Eq program based on your measurements or you can do it yourself. You then download it directly into a MiniDSP. It works amazingly well - measuring afterwards it chopped off the bass peaks to give a much smoother response. The trouble is I didn’t like a ruler flat room curve.

Floyd Toole is on record as an advocate of tone controls to help manage speaker/ room interface. I have no issue with tone controls and use them on a second system.

I’ve gone with the advice you gave me last year to work on room acoustics first then add Eq. I’m very satisfied with the room diffusor that I put at the FRP - not so much with the miniDSP Eq part.
ieales's avatar
ieales
1,201 posts
 
@stereo5 
If the tone controls are designed properly, you will miss nothing.
Every cap, resistor, pot, switch, wire, PCB, layout, ground scheme, connector, dielectric etc. has a 'sound.' Some deteriorate over time. Add a bunch of them together to create a filter and you not only get the filter but you also get the combination of all the 'sounds'. 

Only nothing sounds the same as nothing.

@almarg 
Don't forget Spica. I heartily agree that time trumps frequency six ways to Sunday. Tone controls alter the frequency and eff up the time. If the time is messed up as in most speakers, tone controls may be less objectionable.

@whart 
I guess one assumption that continues to hold is that the system should be properly set up, "voiced" and left alone
As a former recording engineer, I have this perspective, but I was there long before I started recording. If some program requires EQ, it's a bad job and I can't be bothered to fix it. There's just too much well recorded great music to waste time on the bad stuff. That being said, I do sometimes 'fix' digital files but I gotta really LOVE the music.

I am increasingly ambivalent about the purist approach, knowing how much gimmickry already goes into to most commercial recordings and how difficult it is to reproduce the illusion
I had that attitude about 30 years ago when I quit recording. In the past 3 years, I've focused back on purist improvements. The close I get to the music without the masking, the better I enjoy it.

nitrobob
260 posts
 
Isn't  Audyssey a tone control ? I'm purchasing a Marantz 8805 mainly for the adjustability on the new Audyssey app so I can get away from that default "flat" setting that they have as a standard. Sounds like most of you like that flat setting . I think it inhibits the maximum punch, warmth, dynamics, crispness, and personality that my ears prefer. Frankly to me, flat sounds boring, and dead, kind of lifeless. I mean, it sounds ok,... till you start messing with it, and then everybody in the room says wow, that's MUCH better.!!   But each to his own.  
mr_m
1,900 posts
 
The Schitt Loki seems like an interesting product.
lak's avatar
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lak
4,670 posts
 
The Schitt Loki is inexpensive and works very well.
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