Tone Controls

[Sospri]

This is one thing I miss with the Leema. Tone controls do allow you tweak any nasty recordings, but outside budget models, amps with tone controls are fast becoming a rare breed.

Why would you want to play " nasty recordings".......

 

[chebby]

You've moved house. The new layout doesn't allow for your favourite speakers to stand 18" from the wall and corners so the bass is a tad boomy as you now have to place them 6" from the wall and 12" from the corners.

You drop the bass control one or two notches and it sounds excellent again with no boomy bass on the tracks where it was worst.

However, the guys on the forum are telling you 'straight' is best and you should instead change cables, change the speakers, change the amp, treat the room acoustics (you've just moved house, you don't have any money), change the music, move house again, do penance at the shrine of the blessed Julian for your sin, stick foam and egg cartons and carpet off-cuts or velcro some cats behind and to the sides of the speakers, get a divorce ... etc. ANYTHING but use the tone control. ("Move away from the knob. Never touch the knob. Go directly to source and do not collect £200 because you are a disgrace to hi-fi!")

 

[chebby]

This is one thing I miss with the Leema. Tone controls do allow you tweak any nasty recordings, but outside budget models, amps with tone controls are fast becoming a rare breed.

Why would you want to play " nasty recordings".......

Some people's favourite music was never recorded very well.

 

[steve_1979]

Why would you want to play " nasty recordings".......

Because the musical content can still be good even if the sound quality is bad. Some RHCP albums for example.

 

[Macspur]

You've moved house. The new layout doesn't allow for your favourite speakers to stand 18" from the wall and corners so the bass is a tad boomy as you now have to place them 6" from the wall and 12" from the corners.

You drop the bass control one or two notches and it sounds excellent again with no boomy bass on the tracks where it was worst.

However, the guys on the forum are telling you 'straight' is best and you should instead change cables, change the speakers, change the amp, treat the room acoustics (you've just moved house, you don't have any money), change the music, move house again, do penance at the shrine of the blessed Julian for your sin, stick foam and egg cartons and carpet off-cuts or velcro some cats behind and to the sides of the speakers, get a divorce ... etc. ANYTHING but use the tone control. ("Move away from the knob. Never touch the knob. Go directly to source and do not collect £200 because you are a disgrace to hi-fi!")

Lol!

good points well made Chebby and good use of hyperbole.

I myself was on the verge of going down the room treatment

route when I had the lovely Sugden Masterclass, but fortunately, the Accuphase with it's tone controls came along... problem solved, I've got them set at my preferred balance and rarely have to adjust them.

Mac

www.macsmusic.blogbubble.net

 

[Sospri]

This is one thing I miss with the Leema. Tone controls do allow you tweak any nasty recordings, but outside budget models, amps with tone controls are fast becoming a rare breed.

Why would you want to play " nasty recordings".......

Some people's favourite music was never recorded very well.

Tough, get over it......

 

[ID.]

Almost never used it on my Arcam Alpha 9 (except for the odd experiment increasing the bass). In the less than optimal rooms in my current apartment I have my speakers close to the wall and the bass turned down a little to prevent booming. Glad I have them. I'd avoid it if possible, but you can't always choose or adjust your room acoustics so, I'd be more than happy to make the adjustments at the amplification stage (actually, DSP would be great, but...)

 

[steve_1979]

This is one thing I miss with the Leema. Tone controls do allow you tweak any nasty recordings, but outside budget models, amps with tone controls are fast becoming a rare breed.

Why would you want to play " nasty recordings".......

Some people's favourite music was never recorded very well.

Tough, get over it......

Why "get over it" if you have the option to adjust the tone yourself to make it sound better?

 

[chebby]

This is one thing I miss with the Leema. Tone controls do allow you tweak any nasty recordings, but outside budget models, amps with tone controls are fast becoming a rare breed.

Why would you want to play " nasty recordings".......

Some people's favourite music was never recorded very well.

Tough, get over it......

So we should let our musical tastes be entirely dictated by the quality of the recordings? (That's most of my Ska collection gone then.)

Seems to me you have your hi-fi to play hi-fi rather than play music.

 

[Sospri]

This is one thing I miss with the Leema. Tone controls do allow you tweak any nasty recordings, but outside budget models, amps with tone controls are fast becoming a rare breed.

Why would you want to play " nasty recordings".......

Some people's favourite music was never recorded very well.

Tough, get over it......

Why "get over it" if you have the option to adjust the tone yourself to make it sound better?

I have a compilation CD called Rolled Gold by the Stones, now some of the very early stuff is horrenous and no amount of knobs and switches would improve it.

Remember garbage in - garbage out.

What is the point of spending large amounts of hard earned to play rubbish recordings.

Sorry, can't see the logic......

 

[spiny norman]

isnt mcintosh part of marantz?

D+M Group offloaded McIntosh a while back. It's now owned by Fine Sounds, the Italian-based parent of Sonus faber, Audio Research and Wadia.

 

[matthewpiano]

I have mixed feelings. I think it is up to an individual to make their own choice and if they choose to use tone controls to tailor the sound of their system then I can't see why that should be a problem to anyone else.

Personally I have never used them. I always used to think I needed them 'just in case' but on all the Marantz, Yamaha, CA, Rotel, NAD, Onkyo, Arcam, Pioneer etc. amps I've had I never used them, apart from initially checking what effect they had on the sound. The only useful such control I've encountered was the variable loudness on the Yamaha A-S500 which did make the amp more listenable at lower volumes, but then when you get a better quality amp with a better volume pentiometer and a better power supply you don't need that control to compensate. As others have mentioned where I have tried using tone controls I have found them crude anyway.

I'm quite happy having an amp without tone controls or loudness. In fact my Exposure (and the Creek 4330R that I also loved) are about as simple as an integrated amp gets. No speaker switching, no headphone output, no tone controls, no loudness, no filters - just the means to amplify the source signal, control the volume, and switch between inputs. Even having had amps with substantial feature-sets such as the Onkyo TX8050, I never once miss those features because the amp sounds so superb. I do however feel that an amp can be well executed sound-wise and still offer features, as Rotel's models consistently prove.

 

[matthewpiano]

This is one thing I miss with the Leema. Tone controls do allow you tweak any nasty recordings, but outside budget models, amps with tone controls are fast becoming a rare breed.

Why would you want to play " nasty recordings".......

Some people's favourite music was never recorded very well.

Tough, get over it......

Why "get over it" if you have the option to adjust the tone yourself to make it sound better?

I have a compilation CD called Rolled Gold by the Stones, now some of the very early stuff is horrenous and no amount of knobs and switches would improve it.

Remember garbage in - garbage out.

What is the point of spending large amounts of hard earned to play rubbish recordings.

Sorry, can't see the logic......

I don't think anyone is saying that they exclusively play 'rubbish recordings', but anyone who values the content first is bound to have an uneven range of recording quality within their collection. In my view, if recording quality dictates the music you listen to, then the whole hi-fi thing has gone too far.

 

[chebby]

In my view, if recording quality dictates the music you listen to, then the whole hi-fi thing has gone too far.

It reminds me of those people who won't buy a film because it's only available on DVD. (Or because it has a 4:3 aspect ratio or was made in black & white.)

Or those people who look at a photograph and need to know many megapixels the camera had. (Because - as we all know - the more megapixels you have, the better a photographer it will make you.)

 

[JamesMellor]

If on the other hand you want to increase the bass I'd suggest Velcro ing puppies to the speakers instead of cats .

they're sub woofers right 😉

Sorry couldn't help myself

 

[steve_1979]

If on the other hand you want to increase the bass I'd suggest Velcro ing puppies to the speakers instead of cats .

they're sub woofers right 😉

Sorry couldn't help myself

And if you want more treble just add parrots (tweeters).

 

[Covenanter]

Have them, don't use them.

Chris

 

[the record spot]

This is one thing I miss with the Leema. Tone controls do allow you tweak any nasty recordings, but outside budget models, amps with tone controls are fast becoming a rare breed.

Why would you want to play " nasty recordings".......

Some people's favourite music was never recorded very well.

Tough, get over it......

Why "get over it" if you have the option to adjust the tone yourself to make it sound better?

I have a compilation CD called Rolled Gold by the Stones, now some of the very early stuff is horrenous and no amount of knobs and switches would improve it.

Remember garbage in - garbage out.

What is the point of spending large amounts of hard earned to play rubbish recordings.

Sorry, can't see the logic......

I've a good few of the early Stones albums and they're on Decca. Some of which were mastered by Mobile Fidelity, and they sound excellent. Likewise the SACD releases.

 

[davedotco]

I find 'tone' controls to be fairly useless, they are simply too broard to be effective. I lived with a Quad pre-amp for awhile, with the bass contour and the tilt control, I thought it excellent in that respect. The big plus being that it mostly concentrated on the bass end, the tilt control could then be used to adjust overall balance, very useful.

I am not a big fan of graphic equalisers generally but if I had good eq I would probable use it.

Out of interest, many (active) monitor type speakers have very useable eq, often a bass 'shelving' control (acoustic space) that is very useful to adjust for positioning with respect to walls, very useful when used in conjunction with a bass 'roll off'.

Something like this....

 

[Vladimir]

Try fixing the lack of mics and distortion on Elvin Jones' drums on his John Coltrane recordings.

Using the Parametric EQ in JRiver MC19 is brilliant since this player has internal 64bit processing and its in the digital domain so no physical hardware to add distortion etc. You can compensate for the acoustic issues of your room with DSP settings to a decent extent.

 

[davedotco]

Try fixing the lack of mics and distortion on Elvin Jones' drums on his John Coltrane recordings.

There is no need.

These are historic recordings and constrained by the quality and the capability of the equipment available and the studio techniques commonplace at the time.

Remember, this was probably mixed and recorded in real time, it is unlikely that the mixer had sufficient channels to mic the kit in the modern way.

However, good eq could add a little presence and 'cut' to bring out the top kit, but to be honest those recordings have a sound that captures the time and place very well, I think.

 

[Freddy58]

Hiya folks, thanks for the replies 🙂

I'm convinced that tone controls are a useful tool to compensate for flat-ish recordings. I have pretty much all of Genesis on vinyl, and their early recordings I find to be quite flat sounding. I like my reproduction to have a little 'life' to it, nothing over the top, but just a little added warmth. I find it disappointing that so many manufacturers don't bother with tone controls, it's quite limiting. We all have different ideas as to what sounds good, but flat doesn't really do it for me.

Cheers...Freddy

 

[Freddy58]

Oh yes, this made me chuckle.....

You've moved house. The new layout doesn't allow for your favourite speakers to stand 18" from the wall and corners so the bass is a tad boomy as you now have to place them 6" from the wall and 12" from the corners.

You drop the bass control one or two notches and it sounds excellent again with no boomy bass on the tracks where it was worst.

However, the guys on the forum are telling you 'straight' is best and you should instead change cables, change the speakers, change the amp, treat the room acoustics (you've just moved house, you don't have any money), change the music, move house again, do penance at the shrine of the blessed Julian for your sin, stick foam and egg cartons and carpet off-cuts or velcro some cats behind and to the sides of the speakers, get a divorce ... etc. ANYTHING but use the tone control. ("Move away from the knob. Never touch the knob. Go directly to source and do not collect £200 because you are a disgrace to hi-fi!")

 

[eggontoast]

I have pretty much all of Genesis on vinyl.....

I'm not sure tone controls, graphic equalisers or in actual fact that anything is going to help with that, maybe an act of god :shifty:

 

[Freddy58]

Here's a thought.

When we go about choosing a 'system', we try this with that, this with something else and so on until we find something that we like the sound of. Is this not a form of tone control?

Another thought.

If a manufacturer came up with a system that was proven beyond doubt to reproduce music exactly as it was recorded, would everyone buy it?