You are right sometimes I wish I had some sort of tone control, as mentioned they have to be made right or you get muddy sound, would an eq be better? Maybe but I can put up with a bad recording rather than having to adjust constantly.I am sure there are systems worth a lot of money that make those bad(dull or bright) recordings sound even worse.I have a small amount of room treatment and it does help in my bright room.I guess the thought is its going to add or subtract from your system and add distortion, but if you like tone control's and what they do for your system why not?
We give up perspective to avoid tone controls
Hi Everyone,
While most of my thread starters are meant to be fun, I realize this one is downright provocative, so I'm going to try extra hard to be civil.
One thing that is implicit in the culture of "high end audio" is the disdain for any sort of electronic equalization. The culture disdains the use of anything other than a volume control. Instead we attempt to change everything to avoid this. Speakers, speaker cables, amplifiers, and power cords. We'll shovel tens of thousands of dollars of gear in and out of our listening room to avoid them.
Some audiophiles even disdain any room acoustic treatments. I heard one brag, after saying he would never buy room treatments: "I will buy a house or not based on how good the living room is going to sound."
What's weird to me, is how much equalization is done in the mastering studio, how different pro speakers may sound from what you have in your listening room, and how much EQ happens within the speakers themselves. The RIAA circuits in all phono preamps IS a complicated three state EQ, we're OK with that, but not tone controls?
What attracts us to this mind set? Why must we hold ourselves to this kind of standard?
Best,
E
While most of my thread starters are meant to be fun, I realize this one is downright provocative, so I'm going to try extra hard to be civil.
One thing that is implicit in the culture of "high end audio" is the disdain for any sort of electronic equalization. The culture disdains the use of anything other than a volume control. Instead we attempt to change everything to avoid this. Speakers, speaker cables, amplifiers, and power cords. We'll shovel tens of thousands of dollars of gear in and out of our listening room to avoid them.
Some audiophiles even disdain any room acoustic treatments. I heard one brag, after saying he would never buy room treatments: "I will buy a house or not based on how good the living room is going to sound."
What's weird to me, is how much equalization is done in the mastering studio, how different pro speakers may sound from what you have in your listening room, and how much EQ happens within the speakers themselves. The RIAA circuits in all phono preamps IS a complicated three state EQ, we're OK with that, but not tone controls?
What attracts us to this mind set? Why must we hold ourselves to this kind of standard?
Best,
E