who wants tone controls on your next preamp?

Mcphersn - nobody wants 19 year old intern to affect recorded sound. The difference here is that the only think I can do about it is to select good recordings.

I want to have system as transparent and neutral as possible to avoid further damage.

Nature of recording deficiency is more complicated than treble and bass. Adjusting bass and treble affects whole harmonic structure and can make more harm than good. Additional stages containing capacitors reduce transparency. Less is more.

It is interesting that with cheap amp and speakers nothing sounded right and I had to adjust tone all the time. With good amp and very good speakers I don't have any desire to adjust. I don't need tone controls and don't want to pay for them. Fortunately most of high end amps don't have it. If you feel you need them - that's fine. There is no right or wrong here.

If they're great tone controls, absolutely. Good IC's and cables are important. I see the relationship between hyped cables and lack of tonal controls. We'll all hear the true breakthroughs. I remember nearly all analog systems had tone controls. They included them to allow user preference to improve the tonal qualities of the recordings based on the music system and the home environment. On 10 different, perfectly matched, flat reference systems, the same disk will sound different.

I feel digital tone control corrections may best be done like this: Properly set-up high quality, matched reference components. To get a linear musical response, a digital calibration unit like the Behringer 2496 can calibrate your system to the room, and save your preset curves.

The real problem is next. Preset curves are good, but not like having additional control from CD to CD. What would possibly be best is a additional 5-frequency tonal control like the Cello Palette. It's dialed in completley by ear for each CD. 5 dials adjusts tones from 20-20K Hz from 0-6 dB (mids) or 0-12 dB (lows and highs) increments together in both left and right channels.

This additonal control was designed to correct and improve, after the set-up/room calibration, the various lackluster digital mixing issues from CD to CD.

It allows dialing in the most musical playback quality from one music system to the next, plus addresses environmental issues. I'm very surprised that nice tonal control units allowing CD to CD mixing adjustments haven't followed the Palette and fourished. They'd simply go between digital transports and preamps.

If some readers may know of any components similiar to the Palette, please respond.

By tone control, it is easy to adjust treble and brass level to my favour. I understood many hi-end users will not like this method because tone control like a additive to music and not really "sound direct'. They like using cable/power cord/DAS to change the tone w/ so much money.

I like tone control and many big brand equipped with it. such as Marzantz, Luxman & McIntosh and many many.

Just for sharing

Parasound P7 has tone controls on remote. Bass management too if you're using subs.

If your tone controls are A) sufficiently flexible and B)used properly, they will increase the fidelity of frequency response in virtually any system in virtually any room. Key disclaimer : "virtually".

The example I have in mind is digital room correction (DRC) in the bass region. The trade-off is that effective DRC is executed in the digital domain and subjects analog signals to ADC. Some (LP types in particular) may find that too hard to swallow and I get that. But, if you use subwoofers, you needn't go that route above the x-over point and your main signal can remain analog all the way..

Here, the trade-off is (generally) that you must employ an active x-over unit to roll off the main speakers and use corrected subwoofers.. IMO, the negative effects (if any) of a good x-over are dwarfed by the improved frequency response in the bass. I acknowledge that others will disagree on this point.

You can also use a sub/main set-up with main speakers that meaningfully roll off at/above 80hz (where room effects are doing the most damage). No x-over required in the main path and you can keep it completely pure. Just "snug up" the subs from below. The trade-off is a limited choice of main speakers.

Either way, I'm squarely in the "tone control" camp - just make mine DRC.

Marty

PS I agree with the notion that the audiophile idea of "TAS" is kind of misguided. I don't primarily ascribe that to differences in physiologyor even differences in recordings (though these are definitely significant), but to differences in listening rooms.