Loudness - Why has the industry stopped producing amplifiers with this feature any longer?

I will not purchased a system without the loudness switch. I have a restored Marantz 2275 and the Vincent Audio SV 237 and both have loudness switch which are available when needed. My ears like music with the low-end forward and some of the older music are not mastered by today's standards and the loudness switch bring the low-end a step up closer. There is no right way or wrong way to listen to your music. It your equipment and your ears and preference. Think about this - every artist sculpt the music to their preference and the end results is what you hear. This is also true when a classic album is re-mastered by a someone other than the original engineer. There are good and bad mastered and re-mastered music that will always change the sound. The creator controls the final results.

My recollection is that the loudness button simply added an enhanced bass response.  Is my 20 to 30 year old recollection in error?

hayw, bass and treble. 

I have no loudness or tone controls. I’m sure others have explained better than I can why the shortest distance from A to B is an engineers goal. 

If you MUST have a tone variability option, tone controls provide more flexibility. Loudness was a cheap way to compensate for poor circuitry and parts in cheap components. 

I have one in my Dyna PASS. That was a long time ago. Dyna was good in their day. 

I used to have an ARC SP3a that had something called a "Contour" control. Basically, it was a tuneable "loudness" control. I don't recall seeing it on any subsequent models. If the tone controls were activated you could control the curve to add more bottom end for low listening levels. I never used it all that much. Being as this was mumblety years ago, I seldom listened at low levels anyways. But I could see it as a handy tool for apartment/condo dwellers or for background level music. 
Cheers... 

It fell out of favor, when people  were told set there tone control to  neutral and loudness switch off.

Schiit Loki.
This 4 band tone control is marvelous. I use it as a loudness switch for low volume evening listening. For some harsh recordings I tweak the mid-high and high freq controls - but very infrequently. So once set, I just switch it in or out as needed. My Manley Stingray integrated amp allows me to do this with the remote.

I hate people who hate tone controls! Not because I disagree with them, but because they have ruined the audio world for the rest of us. They proclaim Tone Controls = BAD!! Ummm... but there’s this thing they invented call a SWITCH..... and you and just switch them out of the audio path.... and don’t get me started on "oh but that switch is in the signal path and it degrades the sound too..." No! It does’t.
As for the Loudness circuit, there is very sound psychoacoustic reason why this is a fabulous idea! Our hearing loses bass at low volumes. Gee, why can’t we have a circuit that increases bass as we turn the volume down? That would make quiet music infinitely MORE ENJOYABLE. Isn’t that what we want? Music to be more enjoyable?? Well thanks for ruining it for all of us you tone haters! Oh... and Yes, variable loudness is much better than a fixed amount.

So long as you have a variable loudness and variable volume control, this is a very useful control to have.  I'm afraid it was sacrificed to the "less is more" philosophy, along with (in come occassions) balance controls.  Purist, perhaps, but consumer-unfriendly.

They proclaim Tone Controls = BAD!! Ummm... but there’s this thing they invented call a SWITCH..... and you and just switch them out of the audio path.... and don’t get me started on "oh but that switch is in the signal path and it degrades the sound too..." No! It does’t.

The more transparent your equipment is, the more you hear things like switches. That in itself is a pain because if you have that transparency, then you have to pay a lot more for the switches you get so that they don't cause audible degradation.


Putting myself through engineering school I worked as a service technician repairing consumer electronics. Even when the stuff was new, the tone control defeat switch was one of those parts that was a source of failure- mostly out of disuse, just like the tape monitor switch. I had to assume that as the product ages, such switches will become more problematic.


Funny thing though, once my own system got to a certain level of competency, I didn't miss the tone controls. Even at low volumes the bass was perfectly audible.

Maybe vendors would rather have people have to buy more new stuff when things don’t sound quite right which is almost always in audiophile land. 

I will say the 4 3-way level
Switches  on each of my Ohm F5 speakers is a godsend for helping get things tuned into a room just right.  That’s 3^8 or 6561 different combos. 

Atmasphere, you aren't kidding. All the unused switches in my dad's old HH Scott preamp failed. Not worth fixing. However, in the digital world having such things as room control, bass management, dynamic loudness correction and the ability to juggle your system's frequency response all by computer (no mechanical switches) are real eye openers.
All this can be done without adding any distortion and the DSPs doing it are all operating under a 48 bit system so you can lose a few bits here and there w/o affecting the sound. It is a tweaker's dream come true and a lot of fun. If you get the opportunity you should play around with a dedicated room control processor like the Trinnov ST2 which inserts between your preamp and amplifiers. On bypass it may not sound quite as good as the system without it but engage the room control and you are in a whole new world.  

However, in the digital world having such things as room control, bass management, dynamic loudness correction and the ability to juggle your system’s frequency response all by computer (no mechanical switches) are real eye openers.

I kind of agree with this, it’s the interface I have more of a problem with. Honestly, I prefer knobs. As someone who uses Roon, along with paremetrics and shelving EQ, I would really like a bass / treble knob sometimes. So, I’d like two features really:

1. A physical knob, perhaps assignable.
2. Gapless playback when EQ is changed.
   

Without this, I end up leaving Roon alone, and resort to the integrated. No complaints, but in a future all-digital world, I want knobs, not a slick touch screen. :)

Regarding Switch/Knob issues.  Yes, dusty, worn POTS and oxidized contacts on switches can be a problem.  But that is why we have DeOxit ;-)

I seem to recall the later old TacT gear allowed for user customizable settings that varied with the volume control setting.

Yes, dusty, worn POTS and oxidized contacts on switches can be a problem. But that is why we have DeOxit ;-)

DeOxit has a dicey reputation in this regard. Its not exactly the best medicine if you are dealing with a part that has the resistive element on a phenelic substrate. In a nutshell its bad chemistry.

So people that are really concerned about longevity of such parts (usually collectors) use specialized vacuum cleaners to clean out the pots and see how they behave after that is done before resorting to control cleaners like DeOxit.  

Us designer types that like to make high performance circuits have different concerns. For example, I like tubes for preamp circuits and tubes tend to have some fairly high impedances that cause stray capacitances to roll off the top end. If you really want your circuit to have 3D depth and width, you have to eliminate phase shift; to do that you need bandwidth (2KHz-100KHz at a minimum; 200KHz is better). When you have a switch to bypass a tone stack you're asking for trouble in this regard. Usually the presence of a tone stack suggests two things- first that the speaker is bandwidth compromised and second that getting the sound stage right is secondary to the goals of the listener.


In high end audio, getting the system to sound like the musicians are playing in the room is a pretty serious endeavor. It is rendered impossible if a tone stack is involved. You might be able to get it sound like a good stereo, but sound like its real?- nope, won't do that.

Once I sorted this out and got competent equipment, I found that I never felt like I needed any tone controls. The key is 'competent equipment' but its also important to get the speaker placement right and have a good match between all the bits in the system.

I guess the new norm is its unnecessary. But I liked to experiment with them.

Ask yourself why you want loudness??  More volume, better bass??  I used to run XLR to get more gain and have landed to unbalanced with tubes to get all I was looking for.  Depends on what you want to get from an upgrade.

Yes back then that control used to be on all the receivers, for a little added punch.But I do feel the purists won out...or just wear headphones. 

Manufacturers that used Variable Loudness:
1.  Yamaha
2.  Denon
3.  Mitsubishi
4.  McIntosh
5.  Kyocera
6.  Nakamichi

Any others?

I listen 80% late at night in my living room beneath the master bedroom. After  too many complaints from my wife I tried Sennheiser HD650 phones. Ok but good for max 1 hour due to declining  comfort. Had an old McIntosh MA5100 with a Loudness switch. Subbed into my systemwhich helped but found  my Ohm Walsh 200S35s sucked at low volumes. So, now I have 2 complete systems in that room because I added Kef R300s and a Marrantz nd8006 for night use. So my late night listening is no longer issue. Now my wife is upset for different reasons....

 

 

 

@lou_setriodes , add Decware Z-Rock to your list. This seems like the best solution for anyone wanting to keep their existing gear, but add contour adjustment. No longer in production, there was another unit by a company (1-man operation actually) called Delicious Decibels.