Equalization for vinyl nirvana

It use to be the same everywhere.

The guy would come to work and say, I changed the CART on my TT and I couldn’t believe my ears.. 100% of the time..

MM carts with a stylus change 50% of the time. :-)

THEN the RtR guys said try this new Tape preamp, it made my turntable sound great, while I was doing some recordings. People learned how to LOAD carts correctly EVEN MM carts, it made a world of difference in reproduction. This was in the mid 70s for me. Same with RtRs you get the bias correct.. its a world of difference in playback.

Head or Cart same idea, the phono section on an old Pioneer, Marantz, HK, or Mac sure sounded good back then.. Because they did.. Nothing fancy..

So what’s up with todays 15K rigs sounding anything BUT mucho good, onbre’? I think it’s the same thing.. CART and set it up with a good matching phono stage. Simple tone control on you preamp will be all you need..

Brite digital STUFF for comparison? Your ears are OK? no heavy roll off on the highs right.... ;-)

Regards

If you remember Hi-Fi systems from the past then you’re familiar with this type of Graphic Equalizers. If you want something like this in your system then you can play with it pretending to be a "mastering engineer" in your room, actually many re-mastered reissues are terrible compared to the originals. The reason is that someone EQ-ed them too much. Another example is car stereo with a sub that you can hear two blocks away (some drivers love bass boost:)

Analog audio system must reproduce what mastering and cutting engineers expected you to hear. It must be neutral. If you can put together system like this then it's audio nirvana, but it can take years and years or trial and errors.  

 

Good idea to check the loading/setup of the phonostage for your cart.

What TT, cart, and phonostage are you using?

Records don't sound as bad as you're describing.
Before you start spending money on bandaids, use a test record to check the sound of your system. 
Google Sheffield, Analogue Productions, or Chesky.

It would be nice to know the equipment that you have in your set up. We would like to know what kind of turntable you have, arm for your turntable and your cartridge. It might be something as simple as setting up your cartridge better. Perhaps just raising or lowering your turntable arm will solve the problem. Best of luck and let us know if you solve your problem.

I would do a lot more listening using a much wider variety of musical genres and the highest quality recordings in my collection, before I would think of adding an equalizer.  And if there are consistent deficiencies in tonal balance, a told to me by my ears and brain, I would first wonder about the room EQ, then tonearm and cartridge, again before thinking about an equalizer.  Of the two devices you reference in your OP, one (Sun Valley) seems to be a way to make slight alterations in the RIAA equalization curve, and the other (Decware) seems mainly to be a way to enhance bass response from vinyl.  All the LPs we own that were recorded after the mid- to late 1050s were made with the RIAA curve in mind.  Yet not all of us sense the same problems that you sense, so it is unlikely that the RIAA filter per se is a problem. Those two devices are both interesting toys, and who is to say that you would not like either of them?  Not me.  But first I would look elsewhere for a cure to your malady, as I noted above.  I admit, that approach can end up being more expensive than just buying an equalizer.  By the way, conventional "graphic equalizers" that offer a series of narrow band filters in the audible frequency range, are a definite no-no, in my own experience of them.