novice question on tone controls

[sarathssca]

hello,

one doubt regarding tone controls, may be very novice/basic..
Why most of diy amps/preamps in the forums dont have any tone controls?
Are they not preferred in the audio signal path?
The preamps mostly have only volume control only and not tone controls / equalizers.

Suppose if the speakers have brighter highs (as people say for speakers which produce louder or more prominent in high frequencies ), what is a better approach:
1. add a tone control circuit with the preamp
2. search a amp/preamp which have weaker high frequencies, to compensate

thanks and regards
S Sarath

 

[tnvijay]

Difference of opinion exists here. some audio purists dont want any coloration to signal and they dont prefer tone control.

While some audio designers(,Randy slone,Douglas self) insist tone control for optimum listening experience.
It purely depends on subjective preference. why dont you try both?

 

[Tanoj]

Hi Friend,

IMO the solution is around speaker cable and Interconnect Cable, choose appropriate cable to help get right and balanced tone .... experts may advice you better as iam novice too

Regards

Tanoj

 

[plasmoid]

For Classical/Jazz and generally sedate music, mastering and production is generally very balanced and sound great without tone controls...for rock/metal I cannot do without as there is huge variation from album to album. Also when living in rented spaces, the same setup tends to sound different in each place so I need to compensate for this...so yes I definitely prefer tone controls.

 

[diesel engine]

Hi Friend,

IMO the solution is around speaker cable and Interconnect Cable, choose appropriate cable to help get right and balanced tone .... experts may advice you better as iam novice too

Regards

Tanoj

Can't agree with this. Speaker and interconnect cables must be of good quqlity. but no cable can improve the signal it is carrying, whatever precious metal the cable is made of. Don't fall prey to subjective ridicule like this. I feel sorry to people spending in the tune of Rs.15K for a speaker cable.

 

[plasmoid]

I didn't find any difference in interconnects but there was an audible difference when I upgraded from Monster to Kimberkable speaker wire. Bass tightened up considerably...mids and highs turned very smooth and airy. 2.5K well spent.

 

[sachu888]

All music is recorded by the sound engineer in best possible tonal quality. If you add tone to this recording, it will actually corrupt the sound. A good hifi is the one which reproduces this recorded sound closest to the original recording. A good high end amplifier does not sport the tone controls because it is designed to reproduce the recording the best possible way. There is no need to adjust the tones. Moreover, adding the tones controls means and additional circuit in the signal path.

+1 Best reply IMHO.

Regards
Sachin

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Remember that rooms are not perfect and neither are ears. In youth, the latter may not be obvious, but, as you get older, you may come to dismiss all the arguments about tone controls and their hypothetical effect on signal paths --- and wish that you had them.

Spoken from experience. I wish it wasn't.

 

[tnvijay]

@ Sachin,
sorry to disagree. A sound engineer records in a controlled ambience. Nobody can vouch that we hear the same what the sound engineer had heard or intended. We can assume but not ascertain.

We listen to music in various ambience. Not everyone will have a dedicated listening room. Adding a tone control will save a lot of cost .Otherwise, for that intended listening, we need to upgrade drivers, cabinets,and do room treatment mods. Why does media players incorporate equalisers? Also,hearing acquity differs between people. In people with highfreq sloping hearing loss, adding the treble part will be a necessity.

This controversy is a never ending one. While i respect the view of audio purists, I also believe that tone controls are an essential require ment for optimum listening experience.

 

[vnmathur57]

Room conditions, position of furniture, doors, windows etc corrupt all sounds no matter how professionally it was recorded on the media. For normal listening situations, tone controls come as a facility which one may, or may not, use as per his liking.

 

[doors666]

there are a lot of misconceptions about tone controls. These can be a very useful tool for good listening experience. Now a days, many preamps are offered with a tone control bypass switch also. In neutral position, these anyway have no impact.

The crux of the problem is the misconceptions about tone controls in people, due to which, many manufacturers choose to skip it. Many people simply say, if it has got tone controls, i dont want it.

 

[srisaikat]

Personally I do not like tone control. Based upon my experience I can tell, tone control add some kind of noise floor or deterioration to signal which I able to detect or hear on my NAD and Denon Amp. I never felt comfortable with this little corrupted signal. So rather I will switch the cables and components for best possible combination to get the closest tone of my choice playing different type of music. Yes, I know it can cost you a lot, but at the end it is well awarded.

Same time tone control can save you a lot of money if your ear is not that sensitive or ignore such little corruption.

 

[sarathssca]

I am mainly concerned with the reviews of Alpair 7p dirvers that i have purchased. These are relatively news models and when i ordered not much reviews were there, i went with it seeing good reviews of metal version alpair 7.3 and other mark audio paper drivers.
I have received the drivers a couple of weeks ago.
But now in the reviews, the Alpair 7p seems to be having as they say more brighter and has more forward presentation, they were preferring the popular alpar 7.3 (metal version) over this alpair 7p (paper version).

So looking for a preamp/amp which would compensate the bright sounding alpair 7p...
or checking if tone controls would help in this regard ??

 

[doors666]

I am mainly concerned with the reviews of Alpair 7p dirvers that i have purchased. These are relatively news models and when i ordered not much reviews were there, i went with it seeing good reviews of metal version alpair 7.3 and other mark audio paper drivers.
I have received the drivers a couple of weeks ago.
But now in the reviews, the Alpair 7p seems to be having as they say more brighter and has more forward presentation, they were preferring the popular alpar 7.3 (metal version) over this alpair 7p (paper version).

So looking for a preamp/amp which would compensate the bright sounding alpair 7p...
or checking if tone controls would help in this regard ??

first make your speakers, listen to them, let them break in. If you find a problem, then only fix it.

 

[srisaikat]

tnvijay, out of hundred, 85 persons will agree with you. I have seen people listening to songs with the bass and treble controls put to the max. I too 'was' into tone controls, tweaking the bass and treble. WAS. Later, I started keeping the tone controls in 0 position. I started realising that, this was the real sound. (Some old amps sport a loudness switch, which is the control that makes the sound quality even worse. Sound seems to curl in, and some frequencies get lost, you get good bass, which attracts most listeners.) Same started to happen with tone controls too. The amp that I used that time was a golden Marantz PM 64II. I still have the amp, and I listen to it tone defeated(theres an option for that in the amp.) Later I moved on to toneless amps, and there was no looking back. I right now can't stand the sound with the tone controls tweaked. IMHO, if you start enjoying sound from amps with no tone controls, you wouldn't go back. Right now I use a Plinius 2100i as my main unit, Musical Fidelity Tempest, Creek 4140 and the Marantz of which only Marantz have tone controls.

It is my view also, can not agree any more. Once you used with that tone defeat option along with right combination (it takes little patience) you will never miss that or want to go back to tone control. On many occasions cables can fine tune a system such a way that one can start to like that particular system, previously which used to sound either ear-bleeding or dull.

P.S. As a source some recording may not be good but most of the time source are decent enough (if not excellent), so compensating the signal with tone control is required when you like colored sound or there is a culprit part on your chain (component or cable) which is not resolving enough or right.

 

[doors666]

well, you cant go and change cables because a particular song sounds bright or need bass. Tone controls are useful when you keep the defeat on or use neutral position most of the times, but can tweak the knob a bit when a particular song is sounding not right. It should not be used to compensate for lack of tonal balance in a system but used to compensate it in a song.

 

[srisaikat]

well, you cant go and change cables because a particular song sounds bright or need bass. Tone controls are useful when you keep the defeat on or use neutral position most of the times, but can tweak the knob a bit when a particular song is sounding not right. It should not be used to compensate for lack of tonal balance in a system but used to compensate it in a song.

no need to change cables for a particular song, when one get close to the seeking tone of his choice testing various combination playing various genre of music then there will be no wish to use tone control, of course your companion can request you for that and tone control can be handy to meet such request. My point is you have to achieve that right balance according to your own taste, there will be no wish to change the cables once it is achieved.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Cables as tuning devices is a marketing myth, and a highly successful one: people are hooked on it. No more to say.

If you set tone controls wrong, of course you won't like the sound. If your room or your ears are wrong, you may not like it either. Then it might be said that they degrade the sound. Do they? Maybe on specific amplifiers they do. Maybe, like volume controls, they acquire faults through ageing. All that is perfectly reasonable and I don't want to argue with any of it, but hey, I once drove a car with an impossibly hard clutch, so all manual-transmission cars are bad, right?

I wonder, to be honest, if my software EQ is doing any harm to the sound, but what the hell... I can't hear certain sounds at all without it. Adding zeros to the cost of gear will not change that for me ...ever. So not much choice there.

Now, I may be a little deafer than some, but the vast majority of adults have far-from-perfect hearing too, and the more we enjoyed music in our youth, the more likely it is now. So most of those who old enough to be able to afford other than a theoretical interest in this, probably have imperfect hearing. More people need tone controls than think they need them!

 

[tnvijay]

Thanks preth
As I said, its a subjective decision to use or not to use.Anyways the ultimate aim for anybody is to Enjoy music.Cheers.

 

[srisaikat]

If you feel your other components are ok then cables can be used to fine tune that system but not tuning in a massive way, whenever possible I just want to avoid any active circuits to make any alteration of signals. So to my opinion cable is much safer way to fine tune any system along with placement and room treatment.