I'm coming to believe this trend to remove treble and bass and balance buttons a few years back was simply a con to make the hifi industry a huge amount of money. I haven't compared these but all of this talk of particular amps sounding warm or clinical etc surely could have been resolved by turning a button a few mm? Does anyone agree. I mean I appreciate there might be theoretical distortion or whatever but surely that's what the "analogue sound" is all about? Anyone agree?
Question Tone controls
- Thread starter Barnaby
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Al ears
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No, not really.
However, I do, in my later years, prefer the inclusion of a balance control and find that if you do need tone controls you've bought the wrong amp / speaker combo......
NOTE: there is already a Tone Controls thread going that was started in 2022.
nopiano
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- Feb 15, 2009
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It’s a while since I used tone controls at home. In the car, or with an Amazon Echo, or a TV soundbar, you can indeed tame boominess or enhance vocals. The snag is traditional bass and treble controls on Hifi offered excessive boost or cut, across a vast range of frequencies. Ideally, one needs finer and narrower tweaks, hence today DSP or room correction systems are popular.
Unfortunately, many standard tone controls weren’t necessarily flat when set to zero, hence the bypass button was invented. That’s an ideal option, but many - me included - would rarely bother! However, a few newer designs do offer tone controls, as well as classic designs like Luxman always have.
Unfortunately, many standard tone controls weren’t necessarily flat when set to zero, hence the bypass button was invented. That’s an ideal option, but many - me included - would rarely bother! However, a few newer designs do offer tone controls, as well as classic designs like Luxman always have.
Vincent Kars
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Really?
In the 80's the HiFi people uses graphic equalizers.
The Audiophiles insisted on removing tone control, balance as this of course was tampering with sound quality. Less is More!
Today you won't have something as primitive as tone control. You use EQ or DRC (Digital Room Correction). You do so in the digital domain, not in the analog domain. Better use DSP!
Steve983
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I've always preferred having tone controls, won't buy an amp without them.
PieterG
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- Nov 1, 2025
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That's a fair point. But what's the best point in the signal chain to apply corrections/changes?
In my new setup there's only 1 option: the streaming device. If i wanted to fiddle with controls, maybe it would be nice to have that possibility in the DAC or the (pre)amp so i could evaluate the differences. Maybe it's irrelevant? (honest question)
Al ears
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You are assuming a modern amplifier can do that. Many cannot.
Tone control and DRC are not the same thing that the OP is talking about.
There are quite a few modern integrated amplifiers that incorporate Tone Controls, mine being one of them, and digital doesn't enter into the equation.
Shrek
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- Feb 8, 2023
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Ive never bought a Amp without tone control. If i ever do it would be a very expensive one. No Amp is perfect.
Its personal preference has with music.
My ears are not your ears .
Tone controls were useful when loudspeakers had problems with getting low and high. You could compensate. Today, equipment is so good that, for reasonable prices, you can get an optimised system for your room that don't need tone controls. And the standard bass and treble controls found on some amplifier change by definition the wrong frequencies. If you need to correct some very specific cases, you need a parametric equalizer (analogue or digital).
Al ears
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Exactly, you only need tone controls if something within your choice of amp and speakers is wrong....
Thanks for clarifying all this. Apologies for not noticing the tc thread already going. This all started because I’m looking got a xx way to EQ my Apple Music in iOS and failing outside the presets.
The reason I’m looking is due to age related high frequency hearing loss which I doubt any amp would address on its own - unless you can suggest something else to help? I wonder if there an affordable hardware solution I could use between my iOS device and dac?
At this point I n my life I don't really care about audio equipment but the hearing is a pain.
The reason I’m looking is due to age related high frequency hearing loss which I doubt any amp would address on its own - unless you can suggest something else to help? I wonder if there an affordable hardware solution I could use between my iOS device and dac?
At this point I n my life I don't really care about audio equipment but the hearing is a pain.
They are certainly helpful if there's a room problem too though conventional 'analogue' tone controls are a rather blunt tool for it.
Add that a low volume our hearing is far less sensitive to bass and treble, the old FM curve and tone controls, whether digital or otherwise are not necessarily a bad thing imho.
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