Do you use an eq,tone controls, loudness?

gasolin

Well-known member
I see alot of youtube video about hifi and many private has an eq with a v shaped settings or loudness activated.

Personally i don't use loudness and i don't use the bass, treble tone controls, im lucky not to have bright speakers and speaker with a very good bass, i don't need to adjust the highs,lows and enjoy the difference there is when i listen to all from jazz to blues to pop,rock,heavy metal and electronic music

Some people can't hear the highs so good so they might need to raise it or buy bright speakers and if someone needs more bass they should get a subwoofer for deeper bass instead of louder bass so it starts to fall at lower hz,

Do you use an eq,tone controls, loudness?

If so why ?

Personally i don't think many on whathifi is 14 years old have big cerwin vegas and want as much bass as possible or just a thx system from logitech the gladly are playing extremly loud, even when it's distortion like hell.

Many of us just wants to have as good a sound as possible without having to worry about tone controls, loudness, most of us buy a system that sounds good with no adjustmets of the highs and lows, don't you think that when you have to adjust the highs,lows, that you don't have the perfect system for your needs, that there is something wrong with your system ?
 

gasolin

Well-known member
I of course use source direct for best possible sound and try to angle my speakers towards the listening possition if i need more highs, clearer sound or raise them to ear level, less i don't angle them.

I had a very dark sounding stock reloop cartridge with a good amount of bass, i changed it to an om 10 and got a clearer sound instead of having to use eg,tonecontrols

Cables i could also do a little tweaking to change the balance within the difference the cable i have, makes to a system.

Nt to forget if you have the space placing speaker close to a corner of more bass or more into the room for more clear less boomy, warm sound

That's just a few thing i have done instead of using an eq,tone controls.
 

Dom

Well-known member
That's great, there evil :LOL: . Mind you record labels use all sorts of digital and analogue filtering and I have never had a problem with that! Just think of them as things we shouldn't have to use.
 

abacus

Well-known member
The final determination of the sound is the room, and unless you have a dedicated room that is acoustically treated, the most perfect system available can sound c***.
Tone controls and EQ (Used sparingly) can help to mitigate the rooms problems thus giving a far more accurate sound, however most Hi-Fi users don't want an accurate sound (Or they would be using active studio monitors) but something that sounds nice to them, so just try them out an see, or better still use Dirac or similar as then you will be as close to the original sound as possible in your room. (Unless you have a perfect room and system (It is very expensive to get the room acoustically treated properly) then pure direct (Or similar) is usually the worst possible setting that can be used on a system, as you will then just be hearing the room)
The curve in the bass and treble gives a pleasant sound which a lot of people like.

Bill
 

chris661

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Oct 30, 2019
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That's great, they're evil

Hardly.

Allow me to expand.

In my listening room, there's a strong room mode, which results in a large peak around 40Hz if you use speakers that are flat in the bass. The result is the bass sounds very "powerful", but also very "boomy", and that's with sealed boxes. Now, I could take the traditional HiFi advice and use some small standmount speakers that start dropping at 55Hz. The 40Hz peak would prop that up for a while, and then I'd have no bass at all below 40Hz.

What I've actually done is made some speakers that go way down into the low bass, and then used EQ to flatten down the 40Hz peak. The result is much more accurate than leaving the peak untamed.

Chris
 

gasolin

Well-known member
why not just use bass absobers Chris661 ?


Most modern eq's, tone controls have a a frequency adjustment of 10khz and when it comes to the bass often 100hz, some older amps have 250/500 hz like one of my old amps (i don't have it any more) WHY ?

A simple amp like the nad 3020E it's 50hz not 100hz

Theres alot of expensive speakers that are not natural in the bass, why try to adjust the bass by lowering it (eq,tone controls), why not just buy the lower model (or bigger if you need more bass) instead of having to adjust your way out of to much or to little bass.

Generally theres no problem having a little more bass (or highs) than neutral, as long as it's not to much. Sometimes the right amount could do it so you don't need and want to have a subwoofer (money saved)

https://www.stereophile.com/content/elac-carina-bs2434-loudspeaker-measurements

1219Elacfig4[1].jpg
 
D

Deleted member 108165

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I think they are handy to have. I've got three on the amp but don't use them, (never really played with them), and tend to leave the amp in source direct setting. Have been known to turn source direct off with some recordings as it's too analytical. Loudness or bass boost is a waste of time and always sounds horrible to me.

I do get some bass boom on some tracks at higher volumes but that's more to do with speaker placement issues. My stereo is in a working lounge so there has to be a trade-off somewhere along the line as I don't want speakers in the middle of the room.

When I retire in 4 years maybe I'll have more time to experiment. Must admit that PMC twotwo5's have always been on my radar, but so has an upgraded amp and cdp... decisions, decisions :)
 
D

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I had a very dark sounding stock reloop cartridge with a good amount of bass, i changed it to an om 10 and got a clearer sound instead of having to use eg,tonecontrols
I have found that a change of cartridge brand has a similar effect as changing speakers. Gone through multiple carts in my journey and each one has sounded different, only problem with carts is that you can't audition them so you have to trust owners/enthusiasts to point you in the right direction... worked for me, fortunately.
 

chris661

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why not just use bass absobers Chris661 ?


Most modern eq's, tone controls have a a frequency adjustment of 10khz and when it comes to the bass often 100hz, some older amps have 250/500 hz like one of my old amps (i don't have it any more) WHY ?

A simple amp like the nad 3020E it's 50hz not 100hz

Theres alot of expensive speakers that are not natural in the bass, why try to adjust the bass by lowering it (eq,tone controls), why not just buy the lower model (or bigger if you need more bass) instead of having to adjust your way out of to much or to little bass.

Generally theres no problem having a little more bass (or highs) than neutral, as long as it's not to much. Sometimes the right amount could do it so you don't need and want to have a subwoofer (money saved)

https://www.stereophile.com/content/elac-carina-bs2434-loudspeaker-measurements

15dB at 40Hz is a lot to absorb. It's well outside of what acoustic panels might do - you're looking at Helmholtz resonators etc. Given that it's a living room first and foremost, extensive treatments are off the table.
Even then, EQ cuts directly lower distortion (ie, the woofers aren't working as hard in that range) whereas simply absorbing the sound means the speakers are still working hard, it's just that less sound gets to your ears.

Going for a smaller speaker would mean I miss out on the low-frequency extension I currently have. A 5" standmount would play nicely with the 40Hz peak, but I would lose below 35Hz entirely. Given that the system gets used for movies as well, I don't want to sacrifice the LF extension.

Below is the raw room response of my speakers at my listening position. I use precise EQ to bring down the broad peak around 40Hz, and the narrower one around 70Hz.
23gwOqJ.png


The result is a flat LF response down to 10Hz, which is something that most HiFi systems can't touch.



Getting away from the science and towards the subjective side, if I feel that a particular album has been mastered with too much treble or whatever, what's the problem with playing with the tone controls a little to maximise my enjoyment of the music?


Chris
 

gasolin

Well-known member
it's the room that makes the bass peak at 40hz not the speaker,right? So your speakers won't work harder, most speaker can handle 50-100 watt and is loud without being close to there limited, i don't see why your speakers have to work harder then other speakers.
 

Bumrah

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I am not really a fan apart from occasionally using the Loudness when listening at night at really low volumes, just gives a little more low end and at lower volumes isn't loud enough to sound boomy.
 

scene

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I think that if you're using EQ to perform room correction, then there's a place for it. This is no different, really, what YPAO, Audyssey, and even Dirac do, just in a simpler away. For example, what chris661 is doing makes perfect sense and is a practical and pragmatic approach to handling room conditions, especially where it's not a dedicated room where you can fix up traps, etc.

I don't like twiddling up and down Bass/Treble tone controls (if provided) - OK not quite the "device of the devil" others have alluded to :unsure:, but it's personal choice. Like Bumrah, I've been known to boost the bass when listening late at night at low volumes and also I must admit I run the centre channel on my AVR add an additional +2.5dB over Audyssey's setting to make speech a bit clearer in movies.
 

Dom

Well-known member
Hardly.

Allow me to expand.

In my listening room, there's a strong room mode, which results in a large peak around 40Hz if you use speakers that are flat in the bass. The result is the bass sounds very "powerful", but also very "boomy", and that's with sealed boxes. Now, I could take the traditional HiFi advice and use some small standmount speakers that start dropping at 55Hz. The 40Hz peak would prop that up for a while, and then I'd have no bass at all below 40Hz.

What I've actually done is made some speakers that go way down into the low bass, and then used EQ to flatten down the 40Hz peak. The result is much more accurate than leaving the peak untamed.

Chris
I have know idea how I would measure that, in any case your very clever. Enjoy. :)
 

Dom

Well-known member
DSP - yes, room treatment - absolutely, parametric EQ - no
Room treatment! I really have considered it, experimented with some thick cloth to hear what happens, and had no success in terms of sound quality. I did get more detail at the expense of naturalness. So that's one area that I have not put my money into, yet.
 

insider9

Well-known member
Thick cloth won't do it I'm afraid. Measurement mic is the best investment in a system you can make in my opinion. REW is challenging to use at first but not beyond comprehension. If anyone needs any help with measurements, have gear they've no idea how to use and are not far from Sheffield I'm happy to assist.

Until you hear your system in a treated room you really don't know what it sounds like. Most of what we hear is our rooms.
 
The best sound quality is going to be zero alteration to the signal. No bass or treble added, no loudness controls. The problem with that is the varying quality and tonal balances of albums nowadays. The hard core will be fine with that, but sometimes, some of these masters are pretty painful and unenjoyable to listen to. A little tone adjustment can make the world of difference. On top of this, manufacturers don’t generally produce neutral equipment, it’ll have some sort of character to its sound, so 100% accuracy is out of the window.

For those old enough, think back to the 70s. All amplifiers had tone controls except the small ’cottage industry’ companies such as Naim. Digital room EQ didn’t exist, room treatment wasn’t a big thing, people just used the limited bandwidth Bass and treble controls or graphic equalisers. Now you could argue that systems back then weren’t as accurate as they are now, and many weren’t well set up and in imperfect rooms, but people enjoyed listening to music back then. Do you ever remember anyone saying to you back then that they don’t listen to a particular album because it sounded naff?

I say, use your system however you want to use it. You’ve paid for it, it’s your music, and you’ve bought it all because you enjoy listening to music - why spoil that by using digital room EQ that makes one position sound accurate and the rest of the room naff? Why pay for all this stuff and then not use it because you don’t enjoy listening to music? That’s the point! On top of that, most people tend to be if the opinion that digital EQ sucks the life out of a system.

Personally, I think they should bring graphic equalisers back. They started being phased out during the mid/late 80s after British manufacturers started stripping the tone controls from their amplifiers because It was “wrong” and not accurate. I’m of the opinion that this was one aspect of audio that started the decline of interest in audio - when the industry started dictating how you must listen to music. 99.999% of people in the country don’t get their TVs calibrated, so why are they going to care about listening to music in some accurate fashion? I’m sure they’d be quite popular based on the amount of people that who follow retro hi-fi and actually buy this type rather than modern equipment.

For the record, I don’t use tone controls myself as I like to hear an album “as is”, warts and all. I tend to use them more for AV systems to recreate the sound balance of Ken Kreisel monitors. I do feel that the end user should be in control though, just as they are when they set the TV settings to just how they like them...
 
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Tammytastic

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I have my bass at 0 and a little treble but I do use the loudness on my Marantz PM6006UK. Without it my system sounds flat. Could be my setup , speakers or room. Surely it's all in the ears ?
 

MeanandGreen

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Tone controls still taboo in 2020?

Use them if you want and don't if you don't.

I would never buy an amplifier that doesn't have them. Not because I like tweaking recordings, my music collection is so varied I'd be forever tweaking just on one playlist, if I was to analyse every single tracks tonal balance.

My living room is set up well enough, that my main system sounds great about 95% of the time with the tone controls bypassed. For that other 5% I like to back the bass off just a smidge for some modern really bass heavy tracks. I'm talking about 1.5 db to stop a touch of boom in the room.

My second system in my office upstairs does sometimes require a little bass boost. Nothing deficient with the system. It's just not had the same amount of care and attention put into it's set up. It is an office not a studio. If I want really good sound in the office, I just plug my headphones in and hit the tone defeat switch.
 

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