I like my system flat, no tone controls, no eq..........what is your preference, and why.


A poster on another thread here has encouraged me to post this. Been an audio professional and a hobbyist for 50 tears. I had my time with eq, tone controls ( even reverb and time delay units ). I am currently at the point where I need nothing to alter the recordings I listen to, nor to compensate for room aberrations. I have spent lots of money on equipment , had equipment on loan, of all types ( pretty much a bit of everything, for the most part ) and I have tweaked, and tweaked, and tweaked. I have recently tooled down to a much simpler and less expensive system, and I find I am the happiest I have ever been. Might be my amp, my passive unit, my speakers...…….yes, all of that. Yes, all of that is important, but it is the system synergy that has made me realize that changing anything with an eq or tone controls took me further from that synergy, that balance. I accept, and enjoy my recordings for what they are. Some better than others ( sq ). But, I am enjoying the brilliance of all the studio work put into them,  exactly as they were intended to be listened to. This is me. I do not believe in right or wrong, better or worse, newer vs older, yada yada yada. I have believed, and have stated, particularly in this hobby, to each his own. I hear fuse differences, power cable differences, etc. Some believe I was born a bat. I am happy of my gift, not just hearing well, but through the years, teaching myself " what it is I like ", which is the key for most of us. I am not sure where this thread will go, but I put it out there, and hope folks will drop in, even though much of it might have been stated before in other threads. Thank you A'gon family, be well, and Enjoy ! MrD.
mrdecibel

Showing 5 responses by n80

@czarivey I don't think they mean the dimension of the soundstage when they say "flat".

@mrdecibel I always feel like I need to tell people that my system is 'inherited' because  it would probably seem weird (to people who didn't know) that someone with such a nice system (it seems nice to me) is so ignorant about hi-fi otherwise. It is also to indicate that even though my system is decent, my experience level isn't. 

As far as being here for a short time, yes, very new at this but when I dive into something I usually dive deep. Love learning about this stuff.
I guess I’m at a similar place but by a totally different route. I inherited a very nice older system. I’ve made a few tiny tweaks. I love the way it sounds. Rarely do I feel like something is missing or that I need to spend a lot of money.

I suspect that is a combination of three things: 1) My untrained ears. 2) A nice system that was well matched from the beginning (by someone else) that probably sounds pretty good. 3) Fairly decent room set up.

The only thing that bothers me....and sometimes it really bothers me....is that recordings I know to be poor (over compressed DR, and other stuff) actually sound poor on my system. The bothersome part is that there are knowledgeable folks that say the problem is my system and not the recording and that if I’d get an EQ and make lots of other changes those bad recordings would sound great.

I don’t know enough to argue with that assessment. But I think it is probably safe to say that if I go mucking around with things and spending money to make bad recordings sound good then I run the risk of messing up how good recordings sound now. I’m not willing to take that chance or spend that money.

So I’m sticking with what I’ve got and enjoying the good stuff and suffering through the bad when the mood strikes me.

But yes, as someone pointed out there is now a big movement towards EQ and lots of derogatory things being said about those who don’t believe in its merits. Hard to sort the wheat from the chaff.
From reading responses here it does not sound to me like there is any consensus on what the term "flat" means.

I also don't see a real riff between purist and not-purist. What comes out of our speakers is a reproduction and that is all it will ever be. So how can there be any right or wrong way to listen to it? Even the intent of the producer is lost in most cases by his limitations, budget limitations, equipment limitations and the fact that he has no idea how his product is going to be consumed....ear bud, million dollar hi-fi, single speaker in a Ford Pinto am/fm radio.
I think someone may have linked to this video somewhere above but I didn't see it. Nothing much said about the Loki that hasn't been said here but towards the end it does show the frequency curves for each of the dials.

https://youtu.be/i6oyxHGJbsM