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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
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,143 posts
 
Tone controls are for those type of people who prefer shocks on their motorcycles.  Real riders ride hard-tails.  You should feel the road and not cushion anything.  If it's a bad road, then your backside should know about it.  If it's a bad record your room should boom and your ears bleed.  That's if you're a real a-phile.

Btw, my bike's have multiway adjustable shocks.
whart's avatar
whart
2,972 posts
 
@onhwy61 - have a British friend who loves endurance rallies. Did the Cannonball Baker (not the car one, the bike one) on a pre-war Harley. He was in his mid-'70s at the time. Stiff upper lip and all the rest...
erik_squires OP
15,803 posts
 
I do get some of the anti-tone control arguments. I never thought about channel to channel tracking for instance. Cheap stereo pots may vary widely. I’ve also used cheap pro EQ’s and they were not up to par.

I use a Parasound P7 for my pre, which has tone controls as well as bass management. Honestly I feel they are veiling. I wish I knew more about the circuits to see if they could be improved. On the other hand, the DSP unit I use for my subwoofer and center (sometimes) is as transparent as I could wish for. It is also far too cumbersome to use for basic album to album tweaking. It’s a measure, calibrate, and forget type of unit.

What I wish I had today is closer to the Theta Casanova. Convert everything to digital, and EQ in the digital domain. And I’d like that not to cost $10,000. Also, it has to sound GREAT, which the Casanova did, and was the only affordable processor I ever liked the sound of. Affordable only because it was used. :)

Best,

E
whoopycat
165 posts
 
It is possible to find an amp/speaker combo that is tonally perfect (to the owner), but it is difficult and potentially expensive.  

I have two systems, one with no controls (and I have no desire to add them), and one with tone controls (and I wouldn't want to be without them).  

Some tone controls are well implemented and some just sound like band-aids.  My favorite tone control is a Decware ZROCK2 for bass EQ.  Fully adjustable, you can dial in as much kick down low as your speakers will give you, and IMO improves the sound across the rest of the frequency range (it does add gain).  So much easier than trying to integrate a sub, especially if you're like me and you only need bass down to 30-35hz.

tutetibiimperes
202 posts
 
@erik_squires 

There's the MiniDSP DDRC series that does that.  They have a version with digital inputs/outputs (which I use since I don't have any analog components and don't plan to purchase any) and one with analog inputs/outputs (balanced XLR).  

I like the digital version as it keeps everything in the digital realm - my streaming box ouputs via digital optical to the DDRC-22D, which does all of its magic and outputs via optical digital to my preamp without having to go through an additional AD/DA conversion. 

If you have analog sources the DDRC-22A works the same but it has to convert from analog to digital to do what it does then convert back to analog for output.  
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