What happened to tone controls?

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bluegrassphile

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It's kind of slow around here so here goes...I remember my first time around as an audiophile in the mid to late '60s, '70s, and '80s. Almost all integrated amps and receivers had tone controls. About the only thing without tone controls were power amps.

Fast forward to today. Compared to the time period mentioned above there are relatively few amps in high end home audio with tone controls. Some preamps don't even have tone controls. What happened to tone controls?

Not only did most integrated amps and receivers have tone controls but a significant number of systems had graphic or parametric equalizers. Tonal flexibility and control-ability were highly desirable.

Heck, even the integrated amp I'll be purchasing in January has no tone controls. Is it because more controls "dirty up" the signal path? I'm not sure that argument holds water as there are some really impressive sounding amps with tone controls (Luxman and Accuphase to mention a couple). Is having no tone controls more of a purist approach to high end audio? I know this has been discussed before but as far as I can determine, it's been awhile. Are you a tone control or no tone control audiophile? Why? :popcorn:
 
Yeah, I find that odd as well but it is a game of cumulative points to achieve the best sound one can manage.

Some view tone controls as messing with the recording source affecting the sound as intended by the artist.

Tone controls work in conjunction with the signal path in the preamp.

Every system I have owned has included tone controls, and I would not have it any other way.

As I’m using an interim turn table until my new one arrives, tone controls are a blessing.




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I had tone controls on my Burmester integrated.
They surely helped me in our then untreated room, with also speakers not so well dialed in.
The room is optimised now, my Hegel is (absolutely) not bass shy.
I have no need for tone controls anymore.
 
I have not had Tone Controls on my main system for at least 15 years. Still planning on that Luxman which does have them so we shall see how much use they get.

After the post above and realizing that if the Dan D'Agostino gear has them, they must not be all that bad. My guess is Money, and they told us it was to have a shorter path, which saves Money.
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Back in the day I did have some equipment with tone controls; McIntosh Pre-amp for example. I never did use them and preferred when there was a tone control by pass. However, when I got what I considered my best sounding pre back then (Dayton Wright if I recall) it was as basic as you get. An input selector and a volume control. And that was the way I preferred it.

Since jumping back in I have not had a piece with tone controls (as far as I recall) and honestly do not care.

In the car it is a little different. With my Burmester system I do use some slight tone control adjustments :).
 
here in the 21st century, digital signal processing [DSP] is new tone controls -- for a digital source anyway. provides the desired effect but keeps the signal chain short and direct.

firmly residing in the 20th century, i do prefer the knobs. however, i am also currently a purist as my amp has only volume and input selector controls.

:)
 
For room bass modes, bass loading of speakers due to boundaries proximity/room size, bright recordings, dull recordings, bass heavy, bass light recordings, etc, etc, etc, tone controls make perfect sense.
Which is why they were banished from audiophile "purist" equipment. Unpure tools of the devil. Never mind 100,000 rounds of tone shaping took place during the creation of the recordings being played back. Pain and suffering from said modes, recordings, etc are all good.
Here are the wildly varying frequency responses of various recording studios:

attachment.php


http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2009/10/audios-circle-of-confusion.html

Can you guess which one "the artist intended" for you?? Use as much imagination as needed when sitting in your own, very different acoustics room/speaker setup, distances, objects, etc, etc, etc. playing back recordings.

cheers,

AJ
 

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AJ Soundfield said:
For room bass modes, bass loading of speakers due to boundaries proximity/room size, bright recordings, dull recordings, bass heavy, bass light recordings, etc, etc, etc, tone controls make perfect sense.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I have a monitor/sub system, and I use the volume knob on the subs as bass control, even though the bass quality in my room at standard setting is mostly excellent (no or hardly any nodes etc.; the JL Audio subs are DSP'd with microphone calibration). Especially in the bass recordings differ so wildly from one another, it is pathetic. For overripe recordings that on other systems would sound ruined I simply turn down the subs -- problem solved. For bass-anemic recordings that sound pathetic on other systems I turn up the subs. A sound engineer once told a friend that he had a monitor system in the studio that did not do deep bass, so he was simply just guessing what the right amount of bass was. That's probably not uncommon. Now there you have the "artist's intent". To be "purist" about the recording then would be just plain stupid.

My preamp does have tone controls, and I chose it partly for that. I use the controls rarely, but they do come in handy in special cases. I would use the bass control often if I would not have the sub adjustment, see above.

A vintage violin sonata recording is greatly helped by toning down the treble -5 dB. The 1988 Hyperion recording of Robert Simpson's fantastic, majestic 9th Symphony was unlistenable probably because it is one of those early day CDs that came with "pre-emphasis" which then had to be toned-down in the analog domain with "de-emphasis" (analogous to a vinyl RIAA curve). Early CD players did have a (disc encoded) de-emphasis function but that quickly went away as these kind of discs were not produced anymore. My preamp solves the problem with a -7 dB setting for the treble, and the previously unlistenable CD now sounds unexpectedly very good, borderline excellent.

On a good preamp, such as my Octave HP 700, tone controls are in practical terms sonically transparent. I compared the activated tone control on my preamp (which features an extra tube) at neutral setting with bypass mode, and I would have a really hard time reliably discerning any difference on my high-resolution system.


Here are the wildly varying frequency responses of various recording studios:

attachment.php


http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2009/10/audios-circle-of-confusion.html

Can you guess which one "the artist intended" for you?? Use as much imagination as needed when sitting in your own, very different acoustics room/speaker setup, distances, objects, etc, etc, etc. playing back recordings.

cheers,

AJ
Click to expand...

As you said. The "purist" attitude to tone controls is silly.
 
Tone controls went the way for the simple reason of improved neutrality/transparency.

There were some preamps that had pretty good controls- the H/K Citation 1 being a good example: when you set the controls to flat, it actually was flat. I've worked on a lot of consumer gear over the decades; that bit is somewhat unusual. I've been working on a small integrated amp for my bedroom system and one of the frustrating things about it is that 12:00 on the bass and treble isn't anywhere near flat. I've found that adjusting them doesn't help; there is no position on the controls that yields a flat FR- the tone stack is just poorly designed. The thing is, its pretty typical of a lot of tone control stacks seen in many integrated amps and receivers during the 1970s.

When you get rid of the tone controls you also get rid of the gain stage required to drive them. But you also have wider bandwidth and less distortion; this sort of thing is both measurable and audible.

I play in a band so its nice to be able to hear the recordings we've made as we intended. Room correction is one thing- but just introducing a coloration that you can't remove is quite another. So most really competent preamps don't have tone controls, and I've found that if the system is really doing its job I don't miss them at all.
 
I have tone controls in my D’Agostino Momentum Pre. I think I’ve used them a handful of times.
 
atmasphere said:
Tone controls went the way for the simple reason of improved neutrality/transparency.
Click to expand...
Not based on evidence, like trust ears/just listen variety. Only conjecture, based on poor designs, as you mentioned.

atmasphere said:
I play in a band so its nice to be able to hear the recordings we've made as we intended.
Click to expand...
And for all other recordings, aka 99.99999999999% of music based on what I posted previously?
Your ported box speakers don't excite any room modes Ralph?
 
AJ Soundfield said:
Not based on evidence, like trust ears/just listen variety. Only conjecture, based on poor designs, as you mentioned.
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Indeed. As I said above, the tone controls of my Octave HP 700 preamp are very transparent, and unlike the controls in the preamp that Ralph has, they are in fact frequency linear in "0" position, as easily heard in comparison with the by me usually employed bypass mode. But then, Andreas Hoffman, the designer, approaches this very seriously, as he does with everything. For him, nothing is an afterthought.

And for all other recordings, aka 99.99999999999% of music based on what I posted previously?
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As you pointed out above with Sean Olive's Circle of Confusion and its frequency graphs from in room studio monitor responses around the world, there is no way to tell if what you hear is "as the artist intended".

As easily proven, the "purist" argument is nonsense. Period.
 
Al M. said:
the tone controls of my Octave HP 700 preamp are very transparent
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At bare minimum, at least as "transparent" to the audio signal as this:

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:rolleyes:;)
 

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I don't miss tone controls, if my current preamp had them I'd most likely not use them. OTOH I truly miss the variable loudness control on the SP-3.

Years ago someone manufactured a stand alone variable loudness control. I regret not buying one then.

Posting pictures of a "zillion" track console has very little to do with someone using tone controls in their home.

All the best sounding recordings in my collection are either direct to disc or direct to two track masters. That alone should make someone wonder why all those tracks don't result in better sounding recordings.
 
AJ Soundfield said:
At bare minimum, at least as "transparent" to the audio signal as this:

attachment.php


:rolleyes:;)
Click to expand...

Hehe. Of course I meant in comparison with the direct path. But seriously, sometimes I wonder how we can still get such good sound after it has traveled through all those devices...
 
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