Vacuum tubed tone control???

I'm not criticizing your choices at all. I just can't comprehend inserting a device to change the sound of your $10,000 preamp, $10,000 CD player and $18,000 amplifiers, which were presumably purchased for their sonic purity (and musicality), and which now it seems you now want to degrade.

I have heard the ARC Ref 3, Pass 600.5, Eggleston Andra II and Meitner CD system in different systems, so I believe I can imagine generally the sound you have at the moment. The Andra II are very musical loudspeakers. The ARC is a very natural sounding preamp. The Meitner and Pass Labs gear are very accurate and neutral components.

IMO, you cannot achieve the musicality you seek without degrading the signal and losing resolution to some degree. Musicality lies on a continuum between uber-resolution (which you now have), and sonic muddiness.

If you want more musical sounding CD playback, try a $500 Paradisea DAC and run your CDSA into the Paradisea.

This is one nutty hobby.

Why is anybody taking this post seriously? It's clearly a joke! I have $40k plus in equipment, but I'm looking to add some NOS flavored musicality -- GIVE ME A BREAK. He's jerking our collective audiophile chain.

Onhwy61, I believe you're right. Being that it's June 4 and not April 1, I didn't see it clearly.

Of course you can add a tube device, like the MF X-10D mentioned by a previous poster. You can also add some type of tone control. However, looking at the art posters you have in your audio room, it makes me wonder if the problem isn't the media you choose to play.

Lots of rock music originally intended for vinyl sounds horrible on CD. Do you always feel the need for tone controls in your system, or is it just when playing older rock CDs? Do you ever play anything where you don't hear the need for added musicality?

Just curious as I have lots of older CDs (and some newer one, like U2) that are nearly unlistenable on a high resolution system. They do, however, sound just fine played on my car cd player!

If the issue is making bad recording more listenable, without affecting your good sounding CDs, maybe you could add a musical/colored DAC between the CD player and pre-amp. You could have the analog output of your CD player and the analog output from the DAC connected to different inputs on your pre-amp. You could then "engage it" as needed by simply selecting the appropriate input on your pre-amp.

Enjoy,

TIC

Hello all, Thanks for all your input. This has turned into an interesting post. It's taken me two and a half years to bring my system to the level that it's at today. I thought that it was well matched, resolute, dynamic, live sounding--everything that I was looking for. The soundstaging especially is superlative. But after retubing my McIntosh MR71 fm tuner, I realized that there was something missing. As I said before, the MR71 is very musical, but still surprisingly clear. Obviously, the tuner sends an audio signal through the preamp, amps and then the speakers. No problem there. If the tuner sounds good then the downstream components are good as well. My EMM Labs cd player, although still breaking in, is great sounding--neutral perhaps, but it's not that musical. It gives what it's fed--no more no less. Thus my post concerning a "tone control" or equalizer. What I was wondering was if someone made an "audiophile grade" equalizer, that wouldn't harm the audio signal, into which I could insert one or two pair of tubes--say 12au7's? I'm getting the impression that that device/equalizer doesn't exist without harming the audio signal. Thanks again for you responses...Onhwy61, You have a nice system, by the way. I especially like your McIntosh C-42 preamplifier "w/ 8 band EQ".