Bass and Treble Dials

Today's technology permits more precise specific corrections than yesteryear's crude "Bass and Treble Dials".

Timlub,

Capacitors used in analog tone controls have tolerance of few percent producing different phase shifts between channels. Same goes for limited track to track matching of the tone potentiometer. Capacitors, in addition, have dielectric absorption - introducing distortion. Good caps can be very expensive. Cheap Mylar cap is often the reason for the tweeter glare in many low cost speakers.

Unsound,
Yes, accurate filtering is possible in DSP processing, but signal has to be digitized to start with and then converted back to analog again (two conversions). In addition it doesn't solve many problems. For instance some of my Jazz CDs have acoustic bass coming a little strong (nature of the recording). How can I reduce it (or should I?) without changing sound of lower piano registers. On the other side of the frequency spectrum - how can I make cymbals to sound stronger without changing timbre of voice or not making violins "screechy". Harmonic structure of many instruments is incredibly complex and I don't want to touch it. Less is more.

It doesn't necessarily need to be converted to analog, therefore it's possible not to introduce any new conversions, except for pulse conversion. Perhaps such equalization is best left to room correction, rather than re-engineering existing recordings? Future technologies might be able to identify and correct for individual instruments, but I have no idea when that might happen, if it happens at all.

Hi Kijanki,
I have in my home electrolytics, poly carbs, poly props(metalized and pure film), paper in oil, poly styrene and teflons. I have played a bunch. I measure everyone to less than 1% tolerance. I don't have any mylars and generally agree about the sound of those, but I must say, I have had a russian set of mylars that were outstanding, so who's to say. Ok, only a few pio, ps & teflon.
I stand by my comment, really only an opinion that a good tone control circuit (eq) could be built with very good end results. More bands for flexibility would be nice.

Unsound,

That would be really interesting to insert such device in a chain spdif-in spidif-out but I would still stay out of correcting.

Timlub,

It looks like you know your caps. Outstanding Mylars? - no way (Dielectric Constant = 3). It is probably Teflon inside - who would trust Russians? (LOL) Production wise selecting caps below 1% would not be a practical solution while caps like that are very expensive (and still would make imaging a little worse). Circuit would most likely include additional buffer stage that would not make clarity any better either. Potentiometer itself has track to track mismatching about 3dB. Even expensive pots have mismatch of 1dB - still very audible tone change between channels destroying image.

The cheapest amp in Best Buy has all sorts of tone controls - often equalizer, loudness corrector, spatializer, rumble filters, noise filters, balance control etc. It is lacking one minor thing - a good sound. Same goes for many Home Theater systems - a lot of speakers but none of them good sounding.