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We give up perspective to avoid tone controls

Hi Everyone,

While most of my thread starters are meant to be fun, I realize this one is downright provocative, so I'm going to try extra hard to be civil. 

One thing that is implicit in the culture of "high end audio" is the disdain for any sort of electronic equalization. The culture disdains the use of anything other than a volume control. Instead we attempt to change everything to avoid this. Speakers, speaker cables, amplifiers, and power cords. We'll shovel tens of thousands of dollars of gear in and out of our listening room to avoid them. 

Some audiophiles even disdain any room acoustic treatments. I heard one brag, after saying he would never buy room treatments: "I will buy a house or not based on how good the living room is going to sound." 

What's weird to me, is how much equalization is done in the mastering studio, how different pro speakers may sound from what you have in your listening room, and how much EQ happens within the speakers themselves. The RIAA circuits in all phono preamps IS a complicated three state EQ, we're OK with that, but not tone controls? 

What attracts us to this mind set? Why must we hold ourselves to this kind of standard? 

Best,


E
erik_squires
tutetibiimperes
202 posts
 
Audyssey has a lot of settings, some more intrusive than others.  It seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it thing, though it does get more praise as an HT solution than a 2-channel solution.  

With the new Audyssey curve editor app you can limit the frequencies that it corrects for though, so you could set it to just EQ below the Schroeder frequency for your room and leave everything above untouched.
erik_squires OP
5,268 posts
 
Tute:

Yep, but how many want to do this? 

I mean, I do, but I'm a geek. :) I think when it comes to auto-room correction, the default curves matter a great deal. That's why I like to recommend JL Audio despite their absurd prices, and Dirac. I think they have the best default, out of the box settings. 

Best,

E
oranfoster's avatar
oranfoster
72 posts
 
Hello All,
    There are times when I tweak the heck out of even well recorded music.... Sometimes I listen to music at very low volumes and I max out the tone controls and the ‘compensate’ circuit of my Accuphase E-470. I’m surprised that listening at low volumes and the need to boost certain frequencies hasn’t made this discussion. 
    Also, I feel like I have very sensitive hearing and even at normal listening levels I can’t perceive any degradation to the sound when using the tone control on the Accuphase. I will never by an integrated or preamp without them again.

~Oran
bstbomber's avatar
bstbomber
40 posts
 
I believe it is all personal Taste.
Our ears are as individual as we are.
Everyone is different.
What you like the sound of i may not etc.
Also a big factor is your Audio Knowledge and experience.
A well seasoned recording studio engineer would pick out stuff that we would not even think of.
A lot of factors to consider.
One is Volume.
What your listening to another.
Your systems EQ changes with volume.
Read about The Fletcher /Munson Equal loudness curves.

vintage_heath
10 posts
 

I admit I have a less than purist attitude when it comes to tone control. I have different audio setups in different rooms. Different turntables, cartridges, tape decks, speakers, pre-amps, amps, etc. Tube and solid state. Depending on the source material, volume level and which equipment set is being utilized, I use different tone control settings. I will openly admit I process the heck out of everything, all the time, on every system, without exception. Dynamic range expansion, variable notch filter noise reduction, reverb, graphic equalizer, along with all the preamp tone controls, use of loudness contour, etc. You name it, I use it to get the sound I desire. In some cases, I mix the use of tube equipment and solid state equipment in the signal path. The sole purpose is to get what sounds good to my ears based on the system in use. It doesn’t matter what the artist, recording engineer or anyone else wanted at the time of recording or during playback. Once that recording enters my house, it’s my rules and those of no one else. When I go to live concerts, that’s when the artist and sound engineer gets to demonstrate what their vision is. Of course, if I could process that in real time before it reached my ears, I would probably make some tweaks! :-)


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