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
I have always understood "flat" to mean that if there are tone controls on your amp, leave them centred - no promotion and no restriction of high, mid or low frequency.

It used to be said that if you were using them, your gear was sub-standard. You come to realise what a load of bollocks that theory is when you move your set-up to a different room or install acoustic treatments and it suddenly comes to life. Or when you take into account, the differences in quality of some productions and recordings.

Late last year, I bought a Loki to augment the bass in my system which uses various valve amps with no tone controls. To a lesser extent, I also needed to tame the occasionally harsh high ends on some albums. I enjoyed the effect it had on some recordings.

More recently, I moved to a different room and found I needed the Loki less often.
After an external power supply grid issue, I bought a power conditioner that also delivers a constant voltage. I no longer need the Loki at all.

It seems that apart from now being in a more sympathetic room, a clean and constant power supply to the amp, Dac and server was the missing ingredient in my system. I now have a more substantial bottom end as well as a more refined high end.
Hi I am new to posting on the forums. But have been reading and learning for years.  I have a decent mid level system runs in the 20k range all in.  It’s seems very flat and revealing of the true recording whether good or bad it comes through how it was engineered.  My take for what it’s worth is to have tone control and/or eq available (bypassable if possible) so you can improve the bad recording and make it tolerable to your own taste especially for those tunes you really enjoy.

I’ll admit I do gravitate toward the audiophile hi-res recordings to get that live experience in my home.

for those interested I have Coda CP preamp, PS Audio M700 mono blocks, Marantz SA-14s1 SACD/DAC, Technics SL-QL1 turntables, Ortofon X3 MCP cart and PMC OB1 speakers and an ADC SS-525x eq. 
MrDecibel,  I dig where you are coming from.  There comes a time when the current settings and setups have lost the sweetness once presented.  I feel it is good to step back and bypass everything to understand the baseline.  Experiment with different electronics to judge the sonic characteristics. I use a MEN220 and like what it can do.  In my case, it allows me to use dissimilar amplifiers (CJ & Mc) and have some room correction.    
About 5 years ago I got back into this hobby. It started with an Amber 70 power amp and preamp I got from my brother. Since then I have acquired and sold a lot of equipment searching for that audio nirvana. I spent 8 years with Rockford Fosgate as an engineer at their speaker plant in GR. During my time with RF I had the opportunity to buy/demo a lot of car audio gear. People were always amazed by how good my system sounded. Really simple cd transport to power amp to speakers. I always ran my system flat, no tone controls. For me having a good and stable power source is key. Today I am quite content with a few items, Dynaco ST-70 which I updated, Toppings TP60 amp, Douk 12AX7 tube Preamp, SMSL DAC, Project Genie 1.3 TT, set of Klipsch RF-82 II speakers and my PC. I do not have a lot invested but the returns are great. Synergy can be found in many ways without spending much. The tube pre has a volume and input pot, that;s it. This is what works for me and the amps are stable and produce good clean power.