We give up perspective to avoid tone controls

I generally don’t feel the need for tone controls in my system. I have a nice sounding room, nice accurate speakers, but my CJ amps and pre-amp add a touch of romance.

But I also sometimes use my old Eico HF-81 14W integrated amp. It has basic treble/volume control and I have no problem using them. I used them to dial in the sound I like for that amp. (But once dialed in, I don’t feel any need to bother touching the tone control again).

I personally don’t care to get in to the mind set of trying to tweak my system to every, or most recordings. That to me is too distracting.

That said, the ONE area in which I wouldn’t mind some tweaking control is in adding subwoofers to my system. I haven’t got them set up anything near perfectly, but I love the effect of full range for lots of tracks, but the occasional tracks I prefer without subs. I’d like a pre-set or two that dialed back the sub, or at least the lowest frequencies, at the touch of a button. (And if I implement the DSpeaker Anti-mode unit that I have, I should have such a control).

vtvmtodvm,

Just noticed your reply.

I have two JL Audio E110 subwoofers, and the JL Audio CR-1 outboard crossover, as well as a DSpeaker Anti-node sitting in a box if I want to use it.

I have tube preamp, tube monoblocks, and intend to use the crossover to send signal to the mains and sub.   If I feel the need, I'll use the anti-node on the sub frequencies (I don't care to digitize the entire signal if I can help it).

@vtvmtodvm

I completely missed your extended lesson on setting up the JL subs!!!!

Thanks a billion for taking that time! I will go through it more carefully when I’m about to set up the subs. I also have the Soundoctor tracks and the set up advice pages that came with that CD.

Every time I think "ok, this weekend I’ll set up my subs" I look at the steps to get it right (using a crossover) and it looks so damned daunting I can never find the time. I first tried using the high level input method, taking a line off my speaker terminals. That didn’t seem to work so well (lost dynamics and tone). So I went on to buying the CR-1 crossover to "do it right" as all the subwoofer fanatics insist.

The problem is once I’m doing things like crossing over main speakers way up at 80Hz it seems like I’ve then tossing out what the speaker designer did and I’m designing a new speaker. And who the hell am I to design a speaker? It takes years and years for speaker designers to learn how to conquer crossover design, and I’m going to toss out what they did and do better over a weekend? Doesn’t compute for me. The potential for utterly screwing up the sound seems massively more probable than making things better.

But...somehow others do it all the time. So...in I plunge...at some point.

One issue for me is all my source equipment is down the hall from my speaker room, so I can’t easily have the CR-1 in the same room to dial things in. Thus I’ve bought long interconnects to be able to bring the CR-1 into my listening room just for the set up procedure.

At the moment I do have my two JL subs flanking just outside and behind the main speakers by a couple feet or so. Given the limitations of my room space, that is literally the only option EXCEPT I’d actually like to keep the right sub where it is and place the other on the room diagonal which puts it behind my listening sofa to my left side. Supposedly this is one of the good set ups for smooth bass and the other bonus is getting one more sub out of sight (I hate the look of subs).