Equalization for vinyl nirvana

My recent purchase of the Schitt Loki+ 4-band equalizer was an excellent addition to my system. The facts that you can defeat any changes made with a simple flip of a switch and its low cost, makes it a no brainer. Remember, nobody but the recording engineers could know if your system sounds like they recorded it. You can spend thousands of dollars and many hours experimenting with different cables and room treatments that may or may not provide the benefits of the Loki+.

I’d be interested to hear what that does. Very expensive.

@lewn, not necessarily, I know that some dsp systems are expensive  but the Parks Audio Puffin is very reasonably priced with a plethora of functionality and some folks love'em.

Simple tone control on you preamp will be all you need.. 

@oldhvymec, I really enjoy the way you never go with the 'this is the way you do it and that's it' crowd and say hey if you haven't tried it, stick your toe in and try it. You might like it! When did 'tone control' become a bad word? 

Don't we use it in everything from room tone control, interconnects, connectors, tonearm, headshell, speaker wire, tubes/valves, cartridges, damping, and gosh knows what else for tone control? 

Do you enjoy listening to vinyl as much as other sources - a TV or radio for example, or music in the car? 

How about other sources on your vinyl system? Do you enjoy them? Do they share the same problems?

Those comparisons may help show what the problem is.

Live music often doesn't sound 'impressive' in the way that hifi can. It can also sound natural and involving but that is harder to achieve.

If there's a specific tonal problem, others have suggested where to look.

Personally I haven't felt any need for bass, treble, tonal controls since my first system with a Rega turntable in a small bare room, since these wouldn't fundamentally alter the experience. But that's not to say it's the answer for you.

Dear @lewm  : the idea to use eq. in a system it can helps in some room/system conditions.
Now you posted twice against graphic eq. :

"   "graphic equalizers" that offer a series of narrow band filters in the audible frequency range, are a definite no-no, in my own experience "

""  to a typical graphic equalizer, all of which s&&k. ""


When you could have the opportunity to listen to KT equalizers I know that you will be surprised. KT is in a different quality league :

https://mediadl.musictribe.com/media/sys_master/h38/h07/8847672508446.pdf

and exist the 370 model too with a little better specs.

I gave this recomendation to other Agoner in this forum and he bougth it and he is really happy and surprised for an unexpected very high quality level of the KT units. Btw, made in England.

I knew about KT in my early audio years but I could not bougth it because of money and I bougth Soundcrafstmen and other " inexpensive " eq.  Maybe I can try the KT and see what happens.

Till we make tests on audio alternatives we can't know if we can get a true improvement in the room/system quality reproduction levels.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.

To be fair to graphic equalizers, I admit that my opinion of them is now based on old data.  Once I had heard several that were commonly available in the "old days", meaning more than 20 years ago, I gave up.  Plus, the trend for the past 30 years has been away from electronic methods of altering the frequency or tonal balance of the output, which has resulted in the total absence of tone controls from modern preamplifiers.  It's fair to say I am not up to date on the latest best equalizers.  But it seems that the OP is interested in two devices that fiddle with the RIAA equalzation curve; they are not typical graphic equalizers, which was partly my point.