who wants tone controls on your next preamp?

I have a spare Carver c6 pre-amp that I am not using with some of the most flexible tone controls on it that U have ever seen. It also has two tape loops and two loops for external processors, plus adjustable gain and impedance mm and mc phono inputs. Everything can be switched in and out. PErfect for anyone who really needs a lot of tone control or other processing (equalizers, dynamic range processing etc.).

If anyone is interested in it pop me an email and maybe we can work something out in that it is sitting unused currently and has low resale value.

Oh and Sonic holography as well which really does work to create a big holographic soundstage if that is what you are missing.

Also, a dbx 3bx mkii dynamic range processing unit that also sits unused in that my current preamp has no way to switch it in and out easily, but the Carver does.

"I also have a carver C-9 sonic hologram generator, and a DBX-3bx. I have a kenwood GE1100 equalizer with reverb. They have not been used in ages. I don't know why anyone would ever use such things. Back in the day, I thought they were "cool". Lots of blinking lights and such. Always a hit at patys when I was a kid. Now, in the real world, why would you want them, or tone controls?"

Because they work and make life easier.

The world of extreme audio often has little to do with the majority of the real world.

BTW a party is not a good application of Carver holography in that it only works when sitting in the sweet spot and has no benefit otherwise. That would have to be a mighty cozy party.....

It might work with omni speakers in some cases but additional holography should not be much of an issue in that case.

Agreed that use of adjustable subs alleviate the value of other tone controls somewhat and may have helped led to their general demise.

"For ten big ones they oughta be able to put one in there with a bypas button. Maybe even squeeze in a keg-a-rator at that price."

The people who will pay this much in general do not want tone controls, so I doubt it will happen to any large extent.

There will always be some vendors that use practical ease of use features to help differentiate themselves and appeal to a larger market. Carver did this to the nth degree.

McIntosh anyone?

FWIW, I was never able to detect distortion as a result of having tone controls switched in on any system I've ever owned or sold that had them.

Perhaps as a result of upping bass levels too high resulting in clipping that would not occur otherwise, but it was not the tone controls fault that the bass was turned up too high.

I have owned systems for over 30 years and only within the last two years with my latest pre-amp upgrade did I loose the tone controls. Losing them was just a part of moving to the new pre-amp. It was not by design. If the ARC sp16 I use now had the same sound but with switchable tone controls also, that would be icing on the cake.

I never used tone controls heavily however even when I had them. They were switched out 95% of the time. On occasion, they came in handy and added value without any distortion that I could detect. I used to listen quite carefully for differences with tone controls in and out, even with no level adjustments set when switched in, and heard no real difference.

There are lots of circuits regardless in most any pre-amp. Heck, our systems sre nothing but a bunch of interconnected circuits. One more, if done well, does not hurt if needed in practice based on my experience.

The last time I recall actually using the tone controls when I had them was to sometimes adjust the sound of one source when my system was tuned for another, for example digital versus phono. Also sometimes to get speakers in different rooms to sound more similar. My system is a bit unique in this way in that I have 5 pairs of speakers in 5 different rooms all hooked into the same system. Getting each room to sound similarly good to my ears was not an easy task.

Then I set a goal to get each source and room to sound as similar as possible out of the box. Once I accomplished that to my satisfaction, the tone controls sat mostly unused. Now, I have everything pretty well tuned to a particular sound regardless of source or speaker/room combo, so tone controls are not missed.

YEs, one way to look at it is that you are at the mercy of the engineers who use sophisticated processing devices to muck with the purity of the sound. You need tone (and dynamic range) controls in order to fight back! Our masters are heavily armed so maybe we should be also? Or we can just be sitting ducks. Kind of like guns and self defense.

Or on the other hand, maybe we should just dump the picture adjustments on our TVs as well! They add all kinds of clearly visible distortion!

Seriously, the biggest problem I have always had with tone controls (done well) is that I am too lazy to try to tweak things to perfection all the time. Recordings are too variable to ever even attempt this even if one had the tools. You'd spend all your time tweaking and little listening. I prefer things the other way around.

However, on the occasions I have attempted to tweak sound to perfection using tone controls, signal processors, etc, the results are generally superior to what I started with.

HErman,

That's fine but one can argue that that is not what you hear in reality with most recordings. You hear a transformed version that sounds the way the producer wants it to sound. The producer also had all kinds of gadgetry to use in order to get it to sound the way he wants.

If you think you can make it sound better, then tone controls, processors and such are the tools that enable that.

If.....