Preamps ... no bass or treble control?

to me the whole lack of tone controls is nonsense & causes people to invest huge amounts of cash into other areas like cables & room treatments,i dont get it & i never will,to each his own but for me i'll never own a preamp without tone controls or balance,i use them too much.

my pre has a tone bypass & it sucks,i cant listen to music that has a flat response,to me it sounds steril with no life.

if i were you & just startin out in the hobby i would avoid pre's that dont have tone controls & only buy gear that allows you to tailor your sound atleast until you figure out what sounds good in your listening area & try not to get too caught up in all the voodoo.

mike.

I think Bigjoe is right. Although I own a tube preamp without any tone controls (just volume) & have had many other high end preamps of the same design, I also own one with them. I have a B&K PT3 that has bass & treble settings but there are no mechanical knobs to turn. The settings are all done with the remote. It is very nice sometimes to adjust the tone settings slightly to offset room acoustics & recordings that need this compensation. I'll be damn if I can tell they are hurting the music signal in any way because it still sounds very transparent/airy, & detailed. I might get away on this thread by saying: One slight turn of a tone control can save you hundreds or maybe thousands in interconnects & room treatments etc. Naturally people with unlimited resources will disagree but a well engineered preamp with tone controls will do less harm to the signal and I'm enjoying my music tremendously either way!

in a hobby where the enthusiasts change everything under the sun from caps & tubes to cabling its obsurd to ever say that not having tone or balance controls keeps the music pure,what happens when you swap a quad of funkins for gold lions? most of the stuff audiophiles talk about never crosses the mind of engineers or musicians.

while music is being recorded lots of things are changed & unless your running the exact same set up with the exact same settings as in the studio you will never hear music the way it was intended,not even close.

mike.

If you want less hassle in the end go with Tone controls... you could swap preamps and cables for the next 15 years and never get a perfect match, if you need more or less of something make it easy for yourself and have at least bass and treble adjustments. In turn you will see that its not your speakers or amp that you need to keep changing out, they will perform pretty well if you give them a little kick. I found the most important things to spend money on in the end was Source, Speakers, Preamp, And Room(acoustics) Then Worry about the amp, which are nowhere near as problematic to get a good one as the other stuff, and finaly worry about cables, power conditioning, Spikes etc... I just bought a Mcintosh Preamp with the built in 5 Band EQ which has adjustable Loudness and a 30hz control and never heard my system go to the subsonic levels with ease like this, truly got me to the potential of the system. So do yourself a favor and forget about Knocking that 1 db of treble off with a 500.00 pair of cables, or thinking that 1000.00 in bass traps will give you the extra boost you need for deep bass and get it over with by putting in something you can control at your fingertips, and not have to try and beat the odds and change the physics of your entire system several times.

I'm aware that if you invest enough money into your gear, the sound quality reaches such a degree that tone controls are an unnecessary circuit that would ultimately degrade the signal, I've been there. It is also true that preamps with tone controls are generally midfi or less but there are a few quality preamps out there that have incorporated tone controls with little effect on the overall sound quality. I have found even using the highest quality preamps (ARC Reference ll MK ll) and then inserting the B&K PT3 with tone adjustment, at times raised my musical enjoyment to a higher degree with some music. But we live in a free country, if you want to use them, no one will come to your home and arrest you! I don't have audiophiles sitting in my living room taking notes when I play my music, so ultimately I have to please myself regardless of what preamp I'm using. You can do whatever turns you on.