Tone controls - ready for a return?

Held a bake-off at the weekend for some folk from Hi-Hi Wigwam.
At one point a young visitor remarked that he liked the sound on a particular track but thought it a bit too bass heavy. So I turned the bass down.

"wow that's much better, what did you do?"

I turned down the bass a little.

"You can do that on a pre amp??"

Oh yes, on some you can but not many these days.

"That's a great idea, why don't other pre amps offer this?"


Well, I though it was quite funny at the time but it did rather make the point that we've become used to stripped down, hair shirt hi-fi and rather thrown the baby out with the bathwater. So I wonder if with the slow and agonising death of conventional audiophile hi-fi at the mainstream level, we'll see tone controls adopt their rightful place again as standard fitments on audio kit. By 'tone control' I'm including more advanced EQ as well.

 

Well the EQ control is there in the software of most computer based replay systems, but a big old fashioned knob has some merits!

I have been a hair shirt straight through listener for years, but sometimes hanker after a Quad style tilt control to play with.

I can mess with the EQ in software - do I ever? No.

It's a recurrent theme in another place. Here is just one of the many discussions.

http://www.harbeth.co.uk/usergroup/...he-audiophile-curse-or-saviour&highlight=tone

"Pluto" is an audio professional.

A.S. is Alan Shaw, the forum owner.

 

Pluto Paul (ex BBC) visited me recently and we spent several hours putting the audio world to rights

 

Did you have any success?

 

Only in our own little worlds, Brian

 

I've got 5 knobs. Each covering an amps particular freq range:
18-100Hz,
100-330Hz,
330-1200Hz,
1200-12000Hz,
12000-20000+Hz.

I rarely touch them once set.

I can also do -18 to +12dB on each channel in the DSP pre DAC X/O. I measure each channels freq resp and how they interact and adjust the 2 bass channels with filters (cutting, never adding) the sound is pretty well balanced on all music types once setup. Bass channel adjustment takes care of room modes / horn and driver characteristics (the latter are small though).

I did find Spotify streamed via Laptop needed EQ'ing so I have a Spotify specific setup.

I guess this kind of counts as tone controls But I only do it to get what measures well and sounds good.

 

I don't usually adjust the bass or treble level because I just can't be bothered, lol. I have been playing with the dynamic expander recently though!

 

Steve, how is the Spotify streamed from the laptop?
If it's via the analogue output it could well have some roll at the top and bottom.

 

RE tONE CONTROL ON Amplifiers!

Hi Rob.
My Onkyo A8000 integrated Amplifier has tone controls,and I use them!also if I turn the treble knob anticlockwise when recording to a cassette it minimizes the hiss.Cheer`s ron

 

That's manual Dolby!

 

Hi,
Er no, it's USB converted to optical and into Najda DSP pre X/O.

I recently made a further DSP setup for Heavy Rock and this involved steeper (8th order crossover slopes) on the bass and lower slope of the mid horn, raising the midbass lower slope up to 400Hz and dropping the upper mid and tweeter a dB or two.

This worked really well in giving me more attack / heaviness in the bass region and making the higher frequencies more appealing at rock volume levels.

Tests on ACDC and Nirvana proved very pleasing. Even peak limited stuff sounded better (silk purse / sows ear though).

This is a bit more high tech than a tone control but works very nicely on my system...

It's just a button press on the remote to switch setups.