Please allow me to present a thought that may insult, but it’s my opinion.
in the 50’s most radios had a single tone control where to one extreme gave you more bass/less treble and at the other extreme gave you less bass/more treble. Simple but limiting. Then came receivers with both bass and treble, easy for anyone to make a very gross adjustment according to their likings. The super receivers of the late 70’s all upped it by also having midrange controls and then came the 10-16 step equalizers. All of this to allow the user to contour the sound according to their taste and room.
When the majority of what I read now is people and dealers using assorted components for the same task of adjusting tone it insults my intelligence. I don’t mean to say that cables and interconnects don’t have slight colorations, and certainly different amps will sound differently. I do mean to say that the job of a cable and interconnect is to pass information along and not act as the tone control. But when I read that people are not happy with a particular speaker because it’s too bright or doesn’t have the bass slam they want and they go and start changing components to achieve adjustments it just seems to me as bad logic. Very expensive bad logic. Yes, I know there are people who think tone controls (even volume controls) are a bane to good quality sound...probably technically true..but still the alternative of swapping components bothers me.
i have done it...I have 6 sets of speaker cables, 4 sets of interconnects, 4 amplifiers, 5 sets of stereo speakers, 2 sets of home theater speakers, etc.......
in the past each addition was done to go a step higher in the quality of sound ladder (some were higher, most achieved a sideways result, all were Higher cost than the item it replaced).
now resigned to the fact that this path has no end, I look at them as if they were a collection of classic cars...all to be enjoyed for their different flavors.
in the 50’s most radios had a single tone control where to one extreme gave you more bass/less treble and at the other extreme gave you less bass/more treble. Simple but limiting. Then came receivers with both bass and treble, easy for anyone to make a very gross adjustment according to their likings. The super receivers of the late 70’s all upped it by also having midrange controls and then came the 10-16 step equalizers. All of this to allow the user to contour the sound according to their taste and room.
When the majority of what I read now is people and dealers using assorted components for the same task of adjusting tone it insults my intelligence. I don’t mean to say that cables and interconnects don’t have slight colorations, and certainly different amps will sound differently. I do mean to say that the job of a cable and interconnect is to pass information along and not act as the tone control. But when I read that people are not happy with a particular speaker because it’s too bright or doesn’t have the bass slam they want and they go and start changing components to achieve adjustments it just seems to me as bad logic. Very expensive bad logic. Yes, I know there are people who think tone controls (even volume controls) are a bane to good quality sound...probably technically true..but still the alternative of swapping components bothers me.
i have done it...I have 6 sets of speaker cables, 4 sets of interconnects, 4 amplifiers, 5 sets of stereo speakers, 2 sets of home theater speakers, etc.......
in the past each addition was done to go a step higher in the quality of sound ladder (some were higher, most achieved a sideways result, all were Higher cost than the item it replaced).
now resigned to the fact that this path has no end, I look at them as if they were a collection of classic cars...all to be enjoyed for their different flavors.