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Tone Controls

I have recently rethought the issue of tone controls. How many recordings do you own that you don’t like, but a little tweaking and it may be a different story?

How are using tone controls different than when they master the CD in the final process? I have a particular CD that I like and on one song it has a slight glare one it that I feel was missed in the mastering process. Without tone controls, there is nothing you can do after the fact.

Tone controls seem to be taboo in the high-end arena; I think they have been given a bad rap. We were sold the reasoning for no tone controls and we bought it.

If the tone controls have no affect on the signal when left in the middle, such as McIntosh does, no harm no foul, but a useful “tool”.

Someone may have a system that caters best to a certain type or style of music but falls short elsewhere, possibly with tone controls this could be overcome.

Any other thoughts?
brianmgrarcom
bob_bundus
1,834 posts
 
please refer to this archived thread for good discussion on this issue.
http://audiogo5.iserver.net/cgi-bin/fr.pl?aamps&986669323&read&keyw&zztone=control

You should use the forum search engine to find other 40 posts on the subject. The search summary apppears here:
http://audiogo5.iserver.net/cgi-bin/fr_srch.pl?&1&procsrch&3&4&
sugarbrie
3,854 posts
 
I find many LPs are not balanced the same left and right channel. A balance control also comes in handy.
sean
6,231 posts
 
Several older "straight wire with gain" preamps provided switchable "loops" specifically for use with an EQ or outboard tone controls. In my opinion, this offered the best of both worlds.

If the recording was poor enough to need "help" in terms of correcting tonal balance or other deficiencies, the use of a simple bass or treble control might not be enough. As such, a more advanced processor or multi-band EQ would be more suitable. One could then completely remove said device from the circuit and switch it in as needed. This also added more flexibility due to the fact that you could add / change / upgrade the external processor as one felt the need without having to "dump" the preamp that may have otherwise been functioning perfectly. Sean
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6bq5
62 posts
 
With regard to tone controls, I find that there are a few areas with solutions, and some others that demand new software. For LPs, there are a few vintage pre-amps that offer different EQs, other than RIAA. The Mac C-8 actually allows the user to set the eq with 10 switches. This was developed to accomodate the many early EQ formats.

In the case of a basically Good system with some minor Room issues that tone controls might fix, I would suggest looking into the room issues more closely. I realize that tone controls have a higher WAF/SOAF but if the room problem can be IDed and fixed, one might get a significant order of magnitude of improvement - these could be little things like moving the speaker in/out a few inches, etc.

Sean has a good suggestion vis external boxes connected through loops. There have been a few preamps that offer quality tone controls, Cello, Metaxs?, etc, but they are expensive.

Yes this area is over looked, but it is a trouble some area to solve well.
Good luck.
phild
603 posts
 
I'm not positive, but I don't think most people avoid tone controls because of what they do...they avoid them because they involve more circuitry being added into the signal path. Most high-end equipment designs try to have the shortest, most simple signal paths, so they avoid tone controls.

If they're already on your equipment, you might as well use them if you prefer. And you're right...almost all recordings are EQ'd to some point...some quite drastically...especially rock/pop recordings.
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