Bass and Treble Dials

Sputniks,

Adjusting treble and bass can do more harm than good since nature of recording deficiency (if any) is more complex than just treble and bass.

It shows in market demand - no tone controls in most high end systems but tone controls in every low end system - they need them to fix lack of transparency and neutrality.

Low end speaker is a good example - limited low end with pronounced hump at mid-bass. On recordings with a lot of midbass it will sound better with less bass but on recordings with low bass it needs more bass from an amp.

I don't have any desire to adjust tone (or balance) but remember doing it constantly with low end system.

"Rooms need tone controls"

Room treatments improve clarity and imaging.
Tone controls destroy clarity and imaging.

Timlub,

Capacitors used in analog tone controls have tolerance of few percent producing different phase shifts between channels. Same goes for limited track to track matching of the tone potentiometer. Capacitors, in addition, have dielectric absorption - introducing distortion. Good caps can be very expensive. Cheap Mylar cap is often the reason for the tweeter glare in many low cost speakers.

Unsound,
Yes, accurate filtering is possible in DSP processing, but signal has to be digitized to start with and then converted back to analog again (two conversions). In addition it doesn't solve many problems. For instance some of my Jazz CDs have acoustic bass coming a little strong (nature of the recording). How can I reduce it (or should I?) without changing sound of lower piano registers. On the other side of the frequency spectrum - how can I make cymbals to sound stronger without changing timbre of voice or not making violins "screechy". Harmonic structure of many instruments is incredibly complex and I don't want to touch it. Less is more.

Unsound,

That would be really interesting to insert such device in a chain spdif-in spidif-out but I would still stay out of correcting.

Timlub,

It looks like you know your caps. Outstanding Mylars? - no way (Dielectric Constant = 3). It is probably Teflon inside - who would trust Russians? (LOL) Production wise selecting caps below 1% would not be a practical solution while caps like that are very expensive (and still would make imaging a little worse). Circuit would most likely include additional buffer stage that would not make clarity any better either. Potentiometer itself has track to track mismatching about 3dB. Even expensive pots have mismatch of 1dB - still very audible tone change between channels destroying image.

The cheapest amp in Best Buy has all sorts of tone controls - often equalizer, loudness corrector, spatializer, rumble filters, noise filters, balance control etc. It is lacking one minor thing - a good sound. Same goes for many Home Theater systems - a lot of speakers but none of them good sounding.

Unsound,
Thanks, I haven't seen it before. Looks very interesting.

Timlub,
You're right - it is Mylar (I checked Wikipedia). Must be different construction or something else. Hey, if it works it works.