What happened to the loudness control?

The obvious absence of tone/loudness controls on hi-fi equipment is one of the strangest paradoxes of this hobby, and is a reason why many audiophiles are considered waco's (that's in reference to another thread currently active). As someone aptly mentioned, audiophools have no trouble keeping a stable-full of IC's, speaker cables etc. that are used as de-facto tone controls. It's well known that your room and the listening environment is one huge tone-control. Audio components all have distinctly different tone-control signatures. Studio-recording engineers are butchering and over-processing live material.
And yet, despite all of the above, a true-blue "audiophile" with foam on his mouth will rebel against any sort of EQ in one's system under the phony pre-text of some mythological distortion...Lunacy? You betcha!

I think it's going to snow this July; I'm agreeing with Onhwy61 in quite a few posts lately.

As stated above, the Fletcher - Munson Curve still applies. Listening to an audiophile system at low volume shows how far off things can be. I always scratch my head with amazement when I see people throw such large amounts of money at building a system, only to listen at 70 dB. The tonal response just being completely wrong...

What about instructions for the secret handshake, or is that type of information only revealed during the ceremony?

I know this posting is 8 months old but I'm throwing in my input!

I own a 2004 Luxman L505f int amp that has tone and loudness and love it!!

Can tone controls degrade the quality of the sound sure! Maybe on a $300 A/V reciever but my Luxmans tone and Loudness controls do not degrade the sound in any way to my ears. They are a way to improve the sound to my ears. Other people can come over and it may sound like it is degrading the sound but to me it is not.

They can tell me it sound like your tone controls degrade the sound and I might say it needs more bass hold on one second and turn up the bass. It's all up to what the indivdual likes!

This hobby is a individual hobby. Sure you can listen with friends and get advice on equipment, etc but in the end it comes down to what SOUNDS GOOD TO MY EARS OR YOUR EARS!

So yes I am a user and plan on staying that way. All you anti tone control people can preach about signal purity, etc and I will continue using tone controls on my Luxman. Now on my Denon 4800 A/V reciever I don't use the tone controls because I can hear the bad effect the tone controls make. But on my Luxman I can not hear any ill affects on the quality of the sound.

If I can not hear any sound degregation then there is none. If you hear sound degregation then there is some. We all hear things differently.

The idea that tone controls degrade the way the musicians intended the music to sound is a majorly flawed theory!

Okay have any of you heard of a music producer,sound engineer, record excutives? How many artist do you think are aloud to go into the studio and never have anyone change their music. The album they release is not what they would release if left alone in the recording studio. Very few artist have that kind of clout to be totaly left alone when recording.

So the album they release has already been compromised from the artist orginal intent. So I have no problem adding more bass or treble to the way I like it.

The sound engineers can really butcher a recording also. I don't know how many cds I have that sound bad! The music I love but the recording is plain bad.

I don't know about you but if I have the means to change a bad recording into a listenable one I will do it. Now you anti tone people can sit there and listen to a bad recording but I will not.

So for the anti tone people great don't use it but for anyone else who wants to use tone controls and does not hear any ill effect use tone controls and tell the anti toners to leave you alone.