Whither tone controls?

[chebby]

Assuming they are intelligently designed using good quality components then why not?

They used to be 'respectable' enough for the award winning Audiolab 8000a and the Quad 34 and 44 preamps. (I think Quad still have tone adjustments on their 99 series preamp)

Not all speakers are 100 percent ideal in every room even if they are well chosen and a good match. Not all albums are masterpieces of the recording engineer's craft! Sometimes a little judicious 'tweak' might be desirable to adjust for a harsh recording or a less than ideal room acoustic.

So why not? Why are so few good amps (especially above the budget-level) posessed of the ability to adjust the sound?

 

[John Duncan]

Hear hear. My next amp'll have 'em...

 

[Anonymous]

Hmmmm .... think that Chebby has spotted an older amp on ebay that he may interested in?

 

[John Duncan]

dim_span:Hmmmm .... think that Chebby has spotted an older amp on ebay that he may interested in?

Nah:

 

[Anonymous]

nice!

 

[jaxwired]

Well, if they can be bypassed so they don't impact sound quality when not in use, then I'm all for it. The idea that what is on the CD is so perfectly mixed by the recording studio that signal processing is never helpful seems like an over simplification. The recording engineer has completely different gear than you do AND completely different taste. Not all of them are even trying to make the sound natural or neutral.

With that said, I have to admit, I never used them with my NAD gear and now I don't have them...

 

[chebby]

dim_span:Hmmmm .... think that Chebby has spotted an older amp on ebay that he may interested in?

No. Well yes, but I successfully resisted it by going out to the bookshop and having a coffee instead.

It's not time yet.

Got me thinking though. The Audiolab 8000a landed smack in the middle of the 'Flat Earth' hifi revolution of the 1980s and escaped not just unscathed, but positively praised, by all the 'less is more' reviewers despite having the despised tone controls that had almost become a badge of disgrace by then.

Strangely the present incarnation (8000S) has lost the tone controls.

 

[chebby]

JohnDuncan:

Nah:

That too.

Although that is but a shadow of what I crave....

(No, there will be no... "Whither VU meters" thread. They are indefensible.)

 

[Anonymous]

nice amp, and nothing wrong with tone controls as long as you don't end up fidgiting everytime you change a cd ... mine are all set at neutral as I'm happy with the sound

However, if the system sounds too bright or too warm, you can set the controls (permanently) to suit .... instead of faffing around with speaker cables and interconnects

 

[Andrew Everard]

chebby:They are indefensible.

Agreed - VU meters are absolutely indefensible, as well as fairly meaningless apart from showing you how little of your amp's quoted power you are actually using.

 

[shooter]

chebby:
Why are so few good amps (especially above the budget-level) posessed of the ability to adjust the sound?

Tone controls were removed was because of the sound quality. The circuitry involved added unwanted complexity which added phase shifts and resonance's. Removing the the circuitry resulted in the removal of the problem.

 

[matthewpiano]

Tone controls, VU meters/flouroscan meters, loudness controls....

All help to make hi-fi fun. Tone controls and loudness do have a viable purpose as has already been suggested and I can't really understand why anyone really had a problem with them.

 

[chebby]

The problem with 'loudness' controls were that they were mis-named so people naturally misunderstood what they were for.

They were designed for use when playing music very quietly, to compensate for the way our ears become less sensitive to low and high frequencies at very low volume levels. (Compared to the the middle of the audio spectrum).

Should have been called 'quietness' or 'low level compensation' or something similar.

They should have automatically cut out over a certain volume position, even when switched on.

[Edit] Interesting that Naim have introduced a.. "Switchable bass contour control for low-volume listening" on the new Unitiqute. Their first 'loudness' control

 

[manicm]

I still believe tone controls, no matter how well implemented, introduce distortion and muddle the sound when used.

If your room is poor then try other compensations like furnishings, curtainings etc.

 

[Messiah]

I don't see the problem with having the option. I used to have tone controls and loudness on an old Kenwood amp (I even had a Kenwood graphic equaliser) and I often used these to tweak the sound. I was happy with the results. That's what mattered!

 

[chebby]

manicm:I still believe tone controls, no matter how well implemented, introduce distortion and muddle the sound when used.

When I used to have the Arcam Solo-Mini I used to use it's tone controls just a little. Have you tried it on yours?

 

[shooter]

manicm:
If your room is poor then try other compensations like furnishings, curtainings etc.

Instead of moving around the furniture how about buying some PMC fact.8 and adjusting the tone from the rear of the speaker.
Using the passive crossover in a speaker tonal control can be adjusted to suit and you'll have some nice new speakers to boot!

 

[matthewpiano]

Agreed, but loudness is still very useful for very low level listening.

This is a major gripe of mine. Somewhere along the way an expectation seems to have built up in the industry of what is 'proper' and 'correct' in hi-fi, with a consequent attitude that anything which veers away from certain ideals is somehow wrong or not serious hi-fi. This extends beyond tone controls and the like to include things such as cables, supports, mains conditioning etc. Somehow, in some circles, if you don't pay attention to these issues or if you don't deem them to be of great importance, you aren't doing it properly. For goodness sake, why do VU meters NEED to be defensible? They look nice and they help to make what could be a boring black box into something more interesting.

Well stuff it. I'm fed up of it all. Hi-fi was far more interesting and colourful in the 70s and 80s and, IMO, much of it served the music better. I'm completely cheesed off with buying expensive new gear only to find that it has some sort of major flaw that makes you feel the need to upgrade a cable or even upgrade the component itself. Furthermore, going into a hi-fi dealer and being told that £300 for an amplifier is nothing and that you need to spend at least £800 a component to get on the 'proper' hi-fi ladder just leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Its complete rubbish because there is a wealth of older gear out there that can do the job easily.

So my next kit will be old. It will have tone controls and a loudness switch. It might even have VU meters or flouroscan. Furthermore I will use the tone controls to adjust the sound to give poorly recorded stuff a helping hand and I'll use the loudness switch when I'm listening at the very lowest levels. I'm not going to bother about any special, expensive cables or whether anybody thinks my system is good or not. And for all that, I'll most likely get back to the way I used to be - enjoying the music AND enjoying the hi-fi, because it will become something to be involved with instead of some sort of flat, scientific instrument for exact reproduction.

Rant over.

 

[chebby]

Good rant sir!

 

[shooter]

Great rant!

I'd like to add the stereo or mono button option.

 

[Anonymous]

i enjoyed that myself , and i dont even have a hifi ...

 

[JoelSim]

matthewpiano:Agreed, but loudness is still very useful for very low level listening.This is a major gripe of mine. Somewhere along the way an expectation seems to have built up in the industry of what is 'proper' and 'correct' in hi-fi, with a consequent attitude that anything which veers away from certain ideals is somehow wrong or not serious hi-fi. This extends beyond tone controls and the like to include things such as cables, supports, mains conditioning etc. Somehow, in some circles, if you don't pay attention to these issues or if you don't deem them to be of great importance, you aren't doing it properly. For goodness sake, why do VU meters NEED to be defensible? They look nice and they help to make what could be a boring black box into something more interesting.Well stuff it. I'm fed up of it all. Hi-fi was far more interesting and colourful in the 70s and 80s and, IMO, much of it served the music better. I'm completely cheesed off with buying expensive new gear only to find that it has some sort of major flaw that makes you feel the need to upgrade a cable or even upgrade the component itself. Furthermore, going into a hi-fi dealer and being told that £300 for an amplifier is nothing and that you need to spend at least £800 a component to get on the 'proper' hi-fi ladder just leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Its complete rubbish because there is a wealth of older gear out there that can do the job easily.So my next kit will be old. It will have tone controls and a loudness switch. It might even have VU meters or flouroscan. Furthermore I will use the tone controls to adjust the sound to give poorly recorded stuff a helping hand and I'll use the loudness switch when I'm listening at the very lowest levels. I'm not going to bother about any special, expensive cables or whether anybody thinks my system is good or not. And for all that, I'll most likely get back to the way I used to be - enjoying the music AND enjoying the hi-fi, because it will become something to be involved with instead of some sort of flat, scientific instrument for exact reproduction.Rant over.

Blimey Matthew.

I'll add my thrupence worth, as I do. I had tone controls on my previous Arcam system but never used them, so obviously don't find them necessary.

I like the VU meters though, they look good and remind me of my childhood.

 

[the record spot]

JohnDuncan:
Hear hear. My next amp'll have 'em...

My current amp's not only got 'em, it's gone adjustable filters for both treble and bass as well as high and low filters, the dreaded loudness control....I usually have them all on tone defeat.

I used to go down the "minimalist, cleanest path" route, I listened to all that chat, but then have come to the conclusion it's a load of old rot. McIntosh make some of the best amps out there and some of their kit is falling over with adjustable settings. Likewise my aforementioned Sansui, another high end 1970s amp - not of the McIntosh standard admittedly, but excellent nevertheless - that is sonically wonderful to my ears. We get fed so much duff chat in this hifi hobby of ours, it's refreshing to be able to turn round and debunk some of the tired concepts out there with a dose of reality.

 

[Anonymous]

The Quad tilt control offered on their preamps from the 33 to the 99 are very good. There's nothing wrong with them and they're useful when the source material demands a tonal tweak. I struggle to understand why the pursuit of absolute neutrality is more important than enjoying the music. Do people have studio master recordings to listen to? I imagine that many manufacturers omit tone controls due to added cost, especially as they need to be implemented with high quality components.

 

[Anonymous]

If you really want to do something serious with your sound, go for the digital route. Buy a Lyngdorf dpa, for instance (sell the house first). Or install digital processor software on your computer for $30 or so. I rarely used tone control, just because it never really helped to improve the sound. Apparently, a change in frequency response is rarely a solution (if there is a problem), and an x-band equilizer usually makes it even worse.

However, I recently listened a few times to analog laptop output on headphone (sennheiser hd540 ref - oooold) processed by SRS labs technology that came with the realtek hd sound card driver, and the results were quite amazing, I must admit, and definitely an improvement to my ears in this setup. Some settings were quite bad though, but with others (including the default 'Music' setting) clarity and sound stage were much "better" than the original. Unfortunately it does not work with USB out, so it could easily be due to a bad analog amplification quality in the laptop. Don't take my word for it, if you want to test it yourself, download the free pc audio sandbox trial from the SRS labs site. And all this while I generally do not like the results of fiddling with surround, bass boost, echo/reverb etc at all!