I know... tone controls are considered bad. Room treatment, good system matching proper speaker positioning are the way to go. This is what I have been doing (trying) for the past few years with my main and secondary systems and I have gladly paid the 'price' which entails practical sacrifices in the living room. My primary and second system are great and have no complaints. That is until I decided to use them for movie watching. The word to describe the experience is: FAIL. The problem is this: Movies have a wide dynamic range and sound is super uncomfortable with loud explosions and very low level speech. I am sure you know the scenario... explosion: Run for the remote to reduce volume. Speech: Run for the remote to increase volume so you can hear better. Even when it comes to music, my second system is problematic. I don't have any option to treat the room and the speakers are not ideally placed. As a result I get a boomy sound which begs for some eq correction. Unfortunately my Rega amplifiers (Elicit II) have no tone controls.
For movies I have tried: i) Kodi on laptop, ii) Apple TV4, iii) Nvidia Shield TV. Kodi is the best solution so far as it offers a dynamic compression option but I absolutely hate using a full on pc as htpc. The Nvidia Shiled is better option but Android crashes on me occasionally. Apple TV4 is the easiest to use but you cannot load Kodi (at least not without hassle) and the 'reduce loud sounds' option is terrible. In fact, itunes movies were the worst when it comes to sound quality. Very low level speech and boomy explosions.
For music: I use Roon and it is amazing. It offers a wonderful DSP which does everything I need. My main system needs no correction at all but my second system suffers from a boomy sound (due to bad speaker positioning) and Roon helps me get rid of that (low frequency attenuation ).
I am however still stuck with bad sound for movies especially in my secondary system. I am slowly admiting defeat and considering replacing this second system with an amp that offers tone controls. Ideally I would like to find an amplifier that offers the punchy sound of Rega but with the added option of (defeatable) tone controls. Price range would be the same as a Rega Elicit (around £1600) and I would consider second hand as well.
Sorry for the rambling post. Anything that you could recommend I try?
Many thanks
For movies I have tried: i) Kodi on laptop, ii) Apple TV4, iii) Nvidia Shield TV. Kodi is the best solution so far as it offers a dynamic compression option but I absolutely hate using a full on pc as htpc. The Nvidia Shiled is better option but Android crashes on me occasionally. Apple TV4 is the easiest to use but you cannot load Kodi (at least not without hassle) and the 'reduce loud sounds' option is terrible. In fact, itunes movies were the worst when it comes to sound quality. Very low level speech and boomy explosions.
For music: I use Roon and it is amazing. It offers a wonderful DSP which does everything I need. My main system needs no correction at all but my second system suffers from a boomy sound (due to bad speaker positioning) and Roon helps me get rid of that (low frequency attenuation ).
I am however still stuck with bad sound for movies especially in my secondary system. I am slowly admiting defeat and considering replacing this second system with an amp that offers tone controls. Ideally I would like to find an amplifier that offers the punchy sound of Rega but with the added option of (defeatable) tone controls. Price range would be the same as a Rega Elicit (around £1600) and I would consider second hand as well.
Sorry for the rambling post. Anything that you could recommend I try?
Many thanks