I got my first preamp without tone controls back the late 70s. I've not looked back. The trick was getting all the components to that minimum level of competency that no tone controls were needed.
I do miss the bass on some recordings such as Everest (there was a EQ error in their tape machines which was later discovered by Mercury when they purchased the Everest recorders) and Westminsters. But its never been enough to cause me to want tone controls. I like the simplicity of the signal path; in my system from the low output moving coil cartridge to the loudspeakers there's only 4 stages of gain- the additional transparency from such a simple signal path is easily heard and not subtle.
I have tried room correction systems but what I discovered is that if you have a standing wave in the room in the bass region no amount of added power at that frequency will correct it! I prefer a distributed bass array to solve that issue; I found that by removing the room correction the system was instantly more transparent. For the mids and highs I work to make sure my room is right. It does help to take some measurements! But I don't go overboard- my model for a stereo is that the system has the ability to move my room through space and time to the actual musical performance which is grafted onto the front of my listening area.
I do miss the bass on some recordings such as Everest (there was a EQ error in their tape machines which was later discovered by Mercury when they purchased the Everest recorders) and Westminsters. But its never been enough to cause me to want tone controls. I like the simplicity of the signal path; in my system from the low output moving coil cartridge to the loudspeakers there's only 4 stages of gain- the additional transparency from such a simple signal path is easily heard and not subtle.
I have tried room correction systems but what I discovered is that if you have a standing wave in the room in the bass region no amount of added power at that frequency will correct it! I prefer a distributed bass array to solve that issue; I found that by removing the room correction the system was instantly more transparent. For the mids and highs I work to make sure my room is right. It does help to take some measurements! But I don't go overboard- my model for a stereo is that the system has the ability to move my room through space and time to the actual musical performance which is grafted onto the front of my listening area.