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I miss my Loudness Button and Tone Controls....

So I recently upgraded my system to a Rogue Audio Sphinx integrated amplifier, V2.

Prior to this purchase I was using a NAD C162 preamp, and an Emotive UA-200 amplifier.

After a month of listening, I have to say, I miss the tone controls and the loudness feature on the old NAD pre-amp, especially when listening at lower volumes. The Rogue amp sounds great when played at a minimum of 50% of its output, but at lower volumes, it just seems flat. I do use a sub (SVS SB-2000 pro, and I'm using a very efficient speaker (Zu Audio DW's).

I've toyed with the idea of buying an EQ of some sort that has a bypass so that I can boost some of the frequencies when listening at lower volumes, and then bypass when I listening at higher volumes.

Any thoughts on this? Anyone experience anything similar? I'm about to pack and sell the Rogue amp, as the cons outweigh the pros for me.

 

 

barkeyzee1
russ69's avatar
russ69
3,360 posts
 

Yes, the loudness and tone controls us older folks used in the 70s were crappy circuits with crappy parts. 

The SAE Parametric Equalizer in the early seventies was considered to be a very high end piece of audio gear. I used it for a while until I figured out that if a loudspeaker can't do a particular frequency to your satisfaction, you can't force it to sound better. You can emphasize it, but you can't correct it (if that makes any sense)?.

mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,734 posts
 

The SAE Parametric Equalizer in the early seventies was considered to be a very high end piece of audio gear. I used it for a while until I figured out that if a loudspeaker can’t do a particular frequency to your satisfaction, you can’t force it to sound better. You can emphasize it, but you can’t correct it (if that makes any sense)?.

 

Very interesting post... Thanks especially this part:

You can emphasize it, but you can’t correct it (if that makes any sense)?.

In the case of "mechanical equalization" of a room it is like in "electronical equalization" also, we cannot CORRECT a defect in the speakers/gear interaction or in the speakers alone, but we can put the emphaze on some frequencies range that will compensate without correcting the specs and defects or limits of the  gear itself...

 

hifi59's avatar
hifi59
51 posts
 

You’d be amazed on how well a good a higher end receiver can sound once “professionally “ calibrated using its built in eq (parametric in my case.) Those built in auto eq systems don’t hold a candle to a manual professional calibration. When done properly, the results, ime, have always been better vs bypassing the tone controls or equalizer. Of course, bypassing tone controls is the way to go IF your room acoustics are near perfect, but that’s rare in most cases.

gerrie
107 posts
 

A high end receiver can never give the sound as a good two channel amp.

 

 

invalid
1,085 posts
 

Do receivers really count as high end audio?

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