2. misc-audio
  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 1 response by jameswei

jameswei
883 posts
 
Most rooms would benefit from some equalization to compensate for dimension and decor effects, especially if no room treatments are used.
Don't know many people who listen in an anechoic chamber at home.
I guess one reason to eschew at-home equalization is to avoid adding more circuitry into the signal path, as it might dilute the micro detail of the music.  But using tone controls to boost or cut signals at different frequencies is itself a form of distortion.
But some might prefer such personalized distortion effects.
More to discover