Adding Tone Controls?

"My system sounds wonderful when playing well recorded jazz, classical, or "audiophile approved" material. Unfortunately, mass market pop frequently sounds horrible, with screechy splashy highs. It's obviously recorded with a built in bias to be played on car radios or lo-fi mp3s."

Welcome to the club. Your situation is very common; its one of the negative aspects of having high resolution audio equipment. There are a lot of different things you can do to fix the problem. I believe the best, and most effective fix, is to get an EQ.

"Oh for heaven's sake, he's already listening to abysmally recorded albums and you're gonna worry about the supposedly deleterious effects of an equalizer? Some times I wonder if some of you guys made it thru grade school."

I couldn't agree more. I have an EQ that I use for the same reason. You may want to look at a Behringer Ultracurve PRO DEQ2496. I have one and get great results with it.

Behringer DEQ2496 is exactly waht you want.
It is a digital device which can be placed between your transport and DAC.
If (like most) you have multiple outputs on the transport, you can send one to the DEQ2496, and another to the DAC directly. (the DEQ2496 'likes a toslink or AES-EBU in, and i find the AES-EBU out to be the best.
Then you can just flip a switch on the DAC to have the DEQ2496 in or out of the path.
It is a very complex digital device which can do all sorts of tricks for you. including using as an EQ.
Check it out.
I have one I bought a few years ago for $200.
They are now more expensive, but $315 (on Amazon) should find you one.
Steep learning curve, so you HAVE to use the manual!! but worth it.
The BEST low cost digital EQ around. And like i mentioned, it does a lot more too.

To correct/tame less than stellar (bad) recordings, tone control of some sort is needed. Whether it be in the form of simple bass/treble ones, digital correction, equalizer, or linearizer. I would avoid using cable as band-aids, as then you'll need loom$ of them for the diverse recordings, not to mention the trouble of swapping. Fine tuning or use as finishing touch to an already well balanced system is more the cable's duty, imo.

+1 to suggestions by RW/Elizabeth .

Your system description covers two different configurations, and appears not to have been updated in many years. Are you presently using biwired Goertz MI-2 speaker cables, as shown in one of the descriptions? And if so, are you using them without a Zobel network?

If so, between the ultra-high 950 pf/foot capacitance of those cables, which as seen by the amplifier would be doubled in the biwired configuration, and the very low impedances and highly capacitive phase angles which I presume your M-L Odyssey speakers have at high frequencies, you would be subjecting the amplifier to brutally capacitive load conditions at high frequencies. While normally I would be among the last to suggest that the symptoms you are describing be addressed by focusing on cables, if the answers to my questions above are "yes" it seems very conceivable to me that the effects of all that capacitance on the amplifier could be a significant contributor to the problem, exaggerating the consequences of excess high frequency energy when it is present in the recordings.

As far as digital EQ is concerned, you may also want to consider the DSPeaker Anti-Mode 2.0 Dual Core, at around $1100, which has been getting a lot of good press. (I have no experience with it). Among many other functions, as described in Kal Rubinson's review (scroll down to the middle of the page) it "includes a 16-band, user-configurable parametric equalizer with a center frequency range from 20Hz to 24kHz, each band assignable to the right, left, or both channels."

Based on reviews and comments I have seen its transparency is quite good, but if you go that route I would, as suggested by some of the others above, still configure the system so that it could readily be switched completely out of the signal path when desired.

Regards,
-- Al

Thanks for all the responses.

I definitely agree that an equalizer of some sort is probably needed. I like the idea of being able to switch this tone modification out of the loop when playing decently recorded material. The two methods suggested (either via the tape loop or as a separate path from the CD transport) both have merit. The Behringer sounds like a bargain.

Relative to Al's comments - yes, my system still includes the Goertz cables, and I am using the Zobels. You bring up good points relative to the capacitance issue. I had thought that the Pass X250 could handle the load without too much problem, but it's worth further investigation. The counterindication, however, is that the system sounds fabulous with good recordings.