Kal wrote:
"...the old B&T controls can offer a modicum of tuning but, as you do, I prefer an adjustable shelving control."
Yes, bands 1 & 3 on my PEQ can be switched for either peak (with adjustable center and Q) or shelving (with adjustable turnover) behavior, and if I ever use it as a tone control, it usually gets set to shelving and I do take advantage of the frequency adjustability. Personally, I don't think not having the shelf turnover frequencies be adjustable is all that great a handicap if the points are well-chosen and the slopes and dB's are moderate. But as I'm sure you know, there have been B&T controls in preamps and receivers that offered quasi-parametric control of shelf turnover frequency, usually in the form of something like 2- or 3-position switches to go with the respective boost/cut pots.
"Yes, you can do a lot damage with a PEQ if you don't know how to use it but the same can be said for traditional bass and treble controls. (Or, in fact, any really useful tool.) I am old enough to remember when people kept them both turned up (along with the 'loudness' control)."
Hey, I may be younger than you, but no spring chicken anymore and not only do I well remember this from junior high onward, I think it might be worse today than ever, if you factor in what car sound became for gen-Y. (For better or worse, earphones, Ipods and ringtones seem to have steadily replaced boom-boxes in public.)
The first copy of Stereophile I ever read was given to me back in my late-80's bachelor days by a housemate, and though my own system at the time was strictly NAD mid-fi, I couldn't understand what he would be doing with such a mag, since his system was based around vinyl-clad, paper-cone tweetered, Nipponese Circuit City specials and keeping his receiver's loudness and tone controls cranked (he was a drum teacher with an unimpeachable collection of 60's and 70's rock, and a stereo to match :-) Turned out that two of his beer'n'music buddies thought his sound was so kickin', they had gone out and hunted down the exact same speakers and receiver!
On the other hand, there was my father, who owned the same Mac 1900 receiver for 30 years but conscientiously kept the bass and treble sliders fixed in their center detent positions for over 20 of them, before one day I demonstrated for him that, with his speakers (which were almost as old), just bumping each up a bit helped open-up and fill-out the sound, which made him smile. I believe he then left them just where I set them and never thought about the subject again.
Newbee wrote:
"I've since tuned my system differently and have learned to live without."
I totally agree that by the time you work your up to a truly good fidelity system, you find you need tone controls much less if at all the great majority of the time. But also agree this doesn't fully explain the almost irrational allergy most audiophiles seem to have toward them in principle. Then again, I can't explain many audiophiles' 'taste' in program material either (B&T controls are probably superfluous when you're mainly interested being swallowed alive by a 10ft. tall female vocalist -- not that the idea doesn't have its charms -- or are fully surrounded, subwoofed, and virtually fleeing from the same fate with a 30ft. dinosaur), so maybe it figures...
