This is one of audioland's dirty little secrets. The signal passes through miles of wire in the recording console, often with seperate EQ, compression and processing indepedently applied to each track. The producer, engineer and mastering technician all have their chance to "sweeten" the signal. Then we are Satan's sound men for passing it through a pair of bass and treble controls, which may actually correct certain frequency response and phase anomolies created in the preceding processing, and yes, trading some transparency for it. Are we supposed to move our furniture and change our cables each time we want to play one of those Mobile Fidelity recordings that have screwed-up frequency response, not to mention the gazillions of other recordings of beautiful music that suffered at the hands of record industry hacks? El is correct as well, the newer EQs, which operate in the digital domain, have much less deleterious effect on the signal, though us analog guys probably won't want to digitize the signal just to use them.
Colorizing The Sound
For last 7 years I've been using "regular" audio system which consisted of CD player, equalizer, SS integrated amplifier and speakers. Every element in this system was purchased as new for the price ranging from 600 dollars for CD player to 1K for amp. Now I replaced everything by Oracle Turntable, DK Design integrated amp and M.Logans speakers. The turntable connected to amp with 700 dollars cable and speakers use 500 dollars version. Everything is above an average...or at least better than I had before. The soudstage now is wider, deeper... The overall sound is - I would say - more intelligent, sophisticated.. Like a good old wine.....Most likely I didn't yet grow to the level of expertise to start to appreciate the real hi-fi quality...but I really do miss those bass and treble knobs I had on my old amplifier. While (according to what I read here) having them on amplifier would ad some unnecessary electric circuity...I really think they play important role in creating richer and more colorful sound.
On top of bass and treble controls of my old Yamaha amplifier I used equalizer which probably tripled colorization of sound. Many of you could say that those equalizers and bass/treble controls just distort the music throwing it away from real, flat sound a good amplifier delivers...away from the sound of real unamplified instrument.
I wonder what you guys use to substitute missing treble/bass controls? Are there any electronic devices(may be equalizers?) which let control (to add or to subtract) tones of music? Please correct me if I am wrong.
On top of bass and treble controls of my old Yamaha amplifier I used equalizer which probably tripled colorization of sound. Many of you could say that those equalizers and bass/treble controls just distort the music throwing it away from real, flat sound a good amplifier delivers...away from the sound of real unamplified instrument.
I wonder what you guys use to substitute missing treble/bass controls? Are there any electronic devices(may be equalizers?) which let control (to add or to subtract) tones of music? Please correct me if I am wrong.
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- 18 posts total
- 18 posts total