What happened to the loudness control?

What about instructions for the secret handshake, or is that type of information only revealed during the ceremony?

I know this posting is 8 months old but I'm throwing in my input!

I own a 2004 Luxman L505f int amp that has tone and loudness and love it!!

Can tone controls degrade the quality of the sound sure! Maybe on a $300 A/V reciever but my Luxmans tone and Loudness controls do not degrade the sound in any way to my ears. They are a way to improve the sound to my ears. Other people can come over and it may sound like it is degrading the sound but to me it is not.

They can tell me it sound like your tone controls degrade the sound and I might say it needs more bass hold on one second and turn up the bass. It's all up to what the indivdual likes!

This hobby is a individual hobby. Sure you can listen with friends and get advice on equipment, etc but in the end it comes down to what SOUNDS GOOD TO MY EARS OR YOUR EARS!

So yes I am a user and plan on staying that way. All you anti tone control people can preach about signal purity, etc and I will continue using tone controls on my Luxman. Now on my Denon 4800 A/V reciever I don't use the tone controls because I can hear the bad effect the tone controls make. But on my Luxman I can not hear any ill affects on the quality of the sound.

If I can not hear any sound degregation then there is none. If you hear sound degregation then there is some. We all hear things differently.

The idea that tone controls degrade the way the musicians intended the music to sound is a majorly flawed theory!

Okay have any of you heard of a music producer,sound engineer, record excutives? How many artist do you think are aloud to go into the studio and never have anyone change their music. The album they release is not what they would release if left alone in the recording studio. Very few artist have that kind of clout to be totaly left alone when recording.

So the album they release has already been compromised from the artist orginal intent. So I have no problem adding more bass or treble to the way I like it.

The sound engineers can really butcher a recording also. I don't know how many cds I have that sound bad! The music I love but the recording is plain bad.

I don't know about you but if I have the means to change a bad recording into a listenable one I will do it. Now you anti tone people can sit there and listen to a bad recording but I will not.

So for the anti tone people great don't use it but for anyone else who wants to use tone controls and does not hear any ill effect use tone controls and tell the anti toners to leave you alone.

Some of my preamps (I have many, mostly vintage) have a loudness button. I lean a little to the purist side and I do not use it because I can listen at higher levels. At low levels a well-designed loudness function does improve the frequency balance, imo. Some are better designed than others. For instance H-K designed a "Phase-Correct Loudness" (as they call it) feature for their Citation 21 preamp. It boosts only the very low end and can be used to extend the low frequency response of smaller speakers, as they say in the manual. They go on to say that high end boost is not necessary, from their listening tests. A look at the schematic reveals much more than just an RC network. It is an active circuit with four transistors per channel in addition. To my ears it is not unnatural sounding.

IIRC the old Fletcher-Munson curves were superceded decades ago by a study by Robinson and Dadson (spelling may be wrong) which provides more accurate correction for changes in hearing sensitivity at lower sound levels. Of course, these are data averaged over lots of listeners, and your level-specific sensitivity is likely to be a bit different. You could have a simple audiogram to get an idea of your sensitivity across the spectrum, but that wouldn't tell you about your relative growth of loudness across the spectrum at various sound levels.

An equalizer set the way you like it seems more appropriate. I fear the god of audio purity may strike me for writing that.

db

That is what a loudness compensation control is, an equalizer, but variable with the volume. One hopes that it complementary to the frequency response variability of the ear according to volume.
I use the variable loudness compensation control on my Nak 630 pre-amp by setting the compensation at 0 and the main volume control for a natural sounding volume of about 80db or flat frequency response. When I want to reduce the volume to more background levels, I use the loudness compensation control. The main volume setting remains the same.
Works great! I think that the loudness controls on the old Macs worked in the same fashion.
One button loudness compensation is next to useless because it is fixed.
Bob P.