Preamps ... no bass or treble control?

"The proof of a pudding is in the eating." - George Harrison

As a music lover I would not reject anything for any other reason than it reduces the music coming from the speakers. As an somewhat neurotic audiophile I'd be very careful before introducing another transfer of signal(s) in my system. This includes complex amp designs and multiple driver speakers.

However, I've been able to blend a REL subwoofer into the system which has only increased the musical enjoyment. Same thing for the Tonian supertweeters I bought 6-7 weeks ago. So now I'm running a 4 way system which sounds way more musical than the 2 way stand mounts alone.

I also had a Placette passive for 2-3 years which created better music than the conrad-johnson it replaced. However, about a year ago a Joule Electra LA150 made better music than the Placette so I bought it and sold the passive.

I have no tone controls in the system but intend to someday soon audition one of the digital or analog units out there like PARC.

My preamp: no tone controls, no balance control. I have never needed them. Custom made with no controls, on purpose.

Morbius, all active circuitry in some way distorts a signal passing through it, but there are orders of magnitude of distortion. DSP opens up a wide range of filters that practically speaking are not available in analog. My understanding is that some these filters exhibit far less ringing and other time domain distortions than typically used analog implemented filter type. Additionally, DSP allows a designer to chain filters together to compensate for the faults of a particular filter type. It sounds like a kludge, but if the processing power is there, why not use it. I'm not an engineer and I am regurgitating what I've been told by experienced audio engineers, so if I am totally off base, feel free to educate/correct me. Ultimately, the good sound trumps all and my direct experience indicates that some digital EQs sound far worst than others, which is also my experience with analog EQs.

Jw94055, why stop there? Eliminate your volume control! Seriously, a balance control is essential for dialing in soundstage info on some records. As with tone controls, a poorly designed one is pretty useless, but a well designed balance control can really bring the soundstage into focus.

Onhwy61,

It is true that one can implement some more sophisticated
filters in a digital implementation than would be practical
in analog. Your example re: ringing is a good one. One can
implement higher-order filters that have group delays tailored
to prevent ringing - which would be prohibitive for the
equivalent analog filter.

However, more and more I see the "hawking" of digital processing
as a panacea for all audio ills. DSP can side-step some of
the ills of analog circuits - but DSP has its own set of
problems which can be just as bad [ex. Gibb's phenomenon ]
unless those that implement the technology do it carefully.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist