Hi,
What happened to tone controls? The amps and the two "music centres" ( complete with cassette deck, radio, and turntable ) I owned from my teenage years had them. The high-end amps I couldn't afford had them too and then they disappeared.
I was told by a dealer that they interfered with the signal path or introduced distortion or something and that they were not necessary with higher-end gear and I accepted that from then on. ?However, while I was spending thousands of pounds on power supplies etc for my Naim stack a few years back, I started to wonder if a couple of tone controls might not be a good thing and might have brought me some of the more subtle improvements I was after without the outlay. I have often wondered if their disappearance had been something the manufacturers thought into with enthusiasm in order to reduce cost and/or get us to spend more cash on accoutrements that might have been otherwise unnecessary. It might simply have been a way to stimulate interest in different amps which otherwise might sound - or with the twist of a knob made to sound - the same?
In the software age, we seem to have them in the way of EQ controls but I would quite like manufacturers to include them on amps again.
What's the reason ?
What happened to tone controls? The amps and the two "music centres" ( complete with cassette deck, radio, and turntable ) I owned from my teenage years had them. The high-end amps I couldn't afford had them too and then they disappeared.
I was told by a dealer that they interfered with the signal path or introduced distortion or something and that they were not necessary with higher-end gear and I accepted that from then on. ?However, while I was spending thousands of pounds on power supplies etc for my Naim stack a few years back, I started to wonder if a couple of tone controls might not be a good thing and might have brought me some of the more subtle improvements I was after without the outlay. I have often wondered if their disappearance had been something the manufacturers thought into with enthusiasm in order to reduce cost and/or get us to spend more cash on accoutrements that might have been otherwise unnecessary. It might simply have been a way to stimulate interest in different amps which otherwise might sound - or with the twist of a knob made to sound - the same?
In the software age, we seem to have them in the way of EQ controls but I would quite like manufacturers to include them on amps again.
What's the reason ?