letsavit2 said:
I use them if my amp has them, in fact I sold my pioneer a400 20years ago because I missed them.
my naim doesn't have them and the sound is spot on but my marantz amp has them so I use them, mostly to get a little more bass out of my monitor audios.
so why do some frown on using them when they can improve a budget system for nothing or help out with room acoustics you are tied too?
It's like a restaurant where condiments are banned from the customer's tables because the chef has decided no-one should be able to adjust the seasoning of the food.
The manufacturer can charge more for using less components (and such minimilist designs usually cost more). It was a trend started by such companies as Naim with the excuse that 'there was less to get in the way of the music'. It was horse#### then and it's still horse#### now.
Quad, A&R Cambridge (with their A60 and many subsequent amps) and Audiolab (in the early days) and many other high quality companies managed to produce legendary amplifiers
with tone-controls to show up the lies of hair-shirt, cheapskate, purists who'd rather their customers spent fortunes finding the 'right' speakers and fricking around with the products of the burgeoning 'boutique cable' industry.
Now you need to get 'smooth' cables to tame harsh amps (!) or find speakers that have just the right 'synergy' (ech!) and you have to swallow a cartload of pony poo from 'posh wire' companies (and their dealers) who know that a judicious tweak of a treble or bass control would save most customers hundreds (or even thousands) of quid and put themselves out of business.