High end speakers at low volume

@ricco275 wrote:

in your opinion what’s the best tone control option?

Poster @mijostyn has proposed some options for correction in the digital domain preamps, and this would seem a sound solution in your case with the opportunities offered here.

Another way of considering "tone controls" is a more "analogue" approach, namely that of considering the acoustics in your specific environment by means of what’s in the locale itself (rather than post-effect digitally like suggested previously). A livelier environment acoustically can aid low level attentiveness; the importance of a simple thing like a rug on the floor in front of the stereo, what kind it is (a thicker rug or, say, a cow skin) and its position in front of the stereo. Moving it closer to the stereo/speakers takes away some reverberative impact, moving it further away vice versa. Also, experiment with toe-in. Move a little closer to the speakers and adjust accordingly with their positioning - this might help making the sound a bit livelier for a given volume setting.

Another aspect to consider: bass. This segment of TAS’s review of the TAD ME1 brings it into perspective:

...

However, even the finest smaller monitors ultimately run low of bass firepower at some point. Thus sub-forty-cycle bass, while perceivable to a degree, became more of a challenge as the ME1’s responsiveness and focus began to soften and waver slightly, especially at low volume levels.

You might consider adding a pair of subs. The implications of this are potentially far reaching and affects the whole frequency span - at lower SPL’s as well.

 My experience is that small speakers work better at low volume than large. I had a pair of JBL 4350's and they sounded as good as a $10 clock radio at low volume. Horn speakers are efficient and thus produce high volume but for a few exceptions are raspy in sound. Find some nice small polite speakers. 

@mijostyn I can’t find any release date for the DEQX pre4 and no price either. Do you have info about that? I’m looking at the Premate + as I don’t need active speakers treatment and my only digital component to plug in is the DAC. Is the premate + obsolete? Certainly will drop in price a lot on the second hand market once the pre4 is available to buy.

@ricco275  DEQX got stung by Covid. They were just getting ready to release the new Pre 4 and Pre 8 so they announced that the old units were discontinued (the Premate series) and then lost the supply of the very new processor they were putting in the new units. They had to redesign the Pre 4 and 8 around a new even more powerful processor and are getting ready to release the Pre 8 to a small group of us to test the Beta program. Once all the bugs are worked out they will be released to the public, I would guess about 6 months. The Pre 4, which is what you would be interested in and will be around $8000 American, the Pre 8 $10,000. They had not formally released prices yet so, these are estimates. These units are way more flexible than the other units. DEQX will set it up for you online but if you are adventurous you can connect you computer and program away. The Trinnov is idiot proof, set it and forget it and the Anthem is somewhere in between. The Anthem is the best value and I think the DEQX the highest performance overall. A lot of it is being able to make your system do exactly what you want in terms of dialing things in to your taste.

@phusis , I agree entirely, having a preamp with room control is not an excuse to avoid proper room acoustics. Room control has it's limitations. It can only boost a frequency so far before you either run out of power or hit 0 dBfs (digital clipping) Having said this, you are not going to create a loudness compensation curve via room treatment. The goal is to reverse the Fletcher-Munson curve at the volume you prefer to listen at. The curve changes with volume. The hinge point is about 1 kHz so there is significant boost by the time you get to both 500 Hz and 2 kHz. You can't do that with subwoofers. You might be able to do it with analog tone controls. In this regards a programable digital preamp is handily best. You can program curves for different volumes and load them into presets without any penalty. The only ADC you have to make is your phono stage. Everything else stays digital until the final output DACs of the preamp. Since the sub crossover and integration is handled by the preamp a 2.2 unit will have 4 DAC channels. I digitize my phono stage and do the RIAA correction digitally and am convinced it is an improvement. The difference is well within the realm of psychiatric influence so it is hard to be sure without strict rapid AB comparison and I cannot do that with one turntable and phono stage. For sure, it is not detrimental in any way.  

@mijostyn i see. I’m not going to wait 6 months. Between premate and Anthem? It seems Anthem preamp adds harshness to the sound. So Stereophile says at least