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  3. 135979-20253

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
erik_squires

Showing 5 responses by ieales

ieales's avatar
ieales
1,201 posts
 
When working as a recording engineer, I tried to use as little EQ as possible, preferring to change/move microphones, cables and musicians.

Most consumer tone control circuits are poorly implemented with corners in the wrong place and less than stellar tracking. Futzing with a balance control and EQ is a royal PITA.

Fully parametric EQ would be a nice addition, but it gets very expensive for accurate tracking between channels. The additional wire and circuitry is audible in bypass and I'd prefer not to color the many for the few.

Most problem discs have far more egregious faults than can be fixed with EQ.

If I really want to hear the music and it's really bad, I'll rip it and fix it if possible. Sometimes it's just too far gone.

EQ may regain some favor as digital devices add features.
ieales's avatar
ieales
1,201 posts
 
It totally depends on the location of the control in circuit. It could simply pad a driver to reduce level, change the xo frequency or a combination of both.

That being said whether they would be of any particular use in a given room totally depends on the romm
ieales's avatar
ieales
1,201 posts
 
Tone controls are like ketchup. Great on fries, not so much on most everything else. I became hooked on tone-less preamps by db and Dayton-Wright.

Only a miniscule number of discs require any EQ surgery and degrading the many for the few does not make sense. Adjusting level a db or two can often as not change adjust the tonal balance to make listenable enough and usually not much worse than tone controls that have their inflection points too far removed from the problem area.

As far as "seriously missing out", it's true. Without tone controls we're missing:
 - detail loss and masking
 - frequency dependent channel balance
 - non-linear frequency response
 - phase shift

Like most everything, there's no free lunch and we all have to choose our poison.

ieales's avatar
ieales
1,201 posts
 
@stereo5 
If the tone controls are designed properly, you will miss nothing.
Every cap, resistor, pot, switch, wire, PCB, layout, ground scheme, connector, dielectric etc. has a 'sound.' Some deteriorate over time. Add a bunch of them together to create a filter and you not only get the filter but you also get the combination of all the 'sounds'. 

Only nothing sounds the same as nothing.

@almarg 
Don't forget Spica. I heartily agree that time trumps frequency six ways to Sunday. Tone controls alter the frequency and eff up the time. If the time is messed up as in most speakers, tone controls may be less objectionable.

@whart 
I guess one assumption that continues to hold is that the system should be properly set up, "voiced" and left alone
As a former recording engineer, I have this perspective, but I was there long before I started recording. If some program requires EQ, it's a bad job and I can't be bothered to fix it. There's just too much well recorded great music to waste time on the bad stuff. That being said, I do sometimes 'fix' digital files but I gotta really LOVE the music.

I am increasingly ambivalent about the purist approach, knowing how much gimmickry already goes into to most commercial recordings and how difficult it is to reproduce the illusion
I had that attitude about 30 years ago when I quit recording. In the past 3 years, I've focused back on purist improvements. The close I get to the music without the masking, the better I enjoy it.

ieales's avatar
ieales
1,201 posts
 
@ nitrobob
Isn't Audyssey a tone control ?
Audyssey is both time and tone. I use it for radio with pictures aka HDTV, but would never play music through it.

I tried to play music through it once and the missus said "You're joking, right?"

One day when someone plays me a DVD music performance to show off their system I'm gonna pluck up the courage to tell them the sound it just awful...
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