Most forgiving high end speaker 10k-20k?

Thanks, Jeffkad. But I'm afraid that, among audiophiles, we are doomed to remain a minority! Given the wide range of sound quality among my recordings, being without tone controls just makes no sense. Not if you love the sound of music more than the sound of equipment. I also couldn't live without a balance control. Recording L/R balances are all over the place.

-Bob

This discussion has reminded me of how glad I am to have tone controls. (Go ahead, barbecue me!) I listen almost exclusively to classical music, and I seek out recordings for the music and the performance, not so much for the sound. Unfortunately, when you take this approach, you get quite a few poor recordings. My pet peeve is screeching violins. (Please, no system recommendations; good recordings DO sound good.) When things get too bright, I just dial in the tone controls.

It's not an ideal fix, because most treble controls are centered on about 10K Hz, while I believe the actual region of violin brightness is quite a bit lower, probably about 2K to 5K Hz. (That's why I wish they still made presence controls to cut back a little in this region.)

I know folks talk about all the bad things tone controls are supposed to do, but I've never heard them. I think, when needed, they fix far more problems than they might possibly cause.
-Bob

Newbee, that's probably as good a range as any. I doubt there's any "official" definition of the presence region, but it may extend a bit beyond 3,000 Hz. I've seem some old Yamaha receivers with specified presence controls of something like +/- 13 dB at 3,000. So at least those controls are CENTERED at 3K. I'm sure other receivers have slight variations.
-Bob