The better way to EQ your system

"Better" than what? What's your reference in comparison?

tony ky ma said:

in my experience to use an add on style of multi amps system is the most easy way to adjust the best EQ of the listening area, in the old time people use EQ amp for that purpose but will add a lot of contacts and controls also because of those will give up lot of transparency and emotion, end up why to-day's high end design will not have tone control in preamp design all they can do is try to design a very flat frequency respond preamp . but the speakers and room effect can't be in a flat respond as the amp's doing so comes out with brand's making match for the best result , a add on system is to use three amps , one for full range and the other two are the supper high 15K hz 12db/oct and sub low 50 hz 12db/oct and need a high quality level control to give you the best match but those three amps should be the same kind ( all tube or all silicon or all SE or all class A ) and power out put size should match for speakers' driver. I just done a 300B SE line stage with add on cross over preamp for a ultraanaloguerecordings' customer because he need to up grade his system for he can get more information from the tape and the amp is on the way to him . I hope he will enjoy what he looking for
tony ma

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I would like a really good tone control on a preamp, one that can be switched out. Sometimes the high end dogma gets a little rigid. Enjoying a recording that is not perfect can be more important than the slight compromise of the circuit, which could be switched out anyway.

Analog Kid said:

I would like a really good tone control on a preamp, one that can be switched out. Sometimes the high end dogma gets a little rigid. Enjoying a recording that is not perfect can be more important than the slight compromise of the circuit, which could be switched out anyway.

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This might be a good time to once again point out that the audiophile dogma is nonsensical. While a simple parametric EQ is considered the spawn of the devil (really a digital one, in software, before conversion, would be much more transparent but that's the devil himself) because it adds jacks, switches and interconnects, the audiophile ideal is as many boxes as possible -- a 3 box DAC, separate phono and main pre-amps, mono blocks -- each with jacks and switches and interconnects and potentiometers, not to mention tons of redundant resistors, capacitors, power supplies...the list of noise generators and signal degraders is long. And interconnects. And power cables. Less is more? Design simplicity? Wire with gain philosophy? Not in this hobby.

Tim

Methinks that we, audiophiles are somewhat lost in our quest. We have come to be all over the place: it used to be quite simple, even simplistic: The reference was the sound of Live instruments playing unamplified. Now it is: Whatever sounds "good" or whatever one likes. The twist to that is whatever one likes that cost a lot ..In the beginning of High End Audio, we pushed away the truly inadequate Baxandall-type tone controls.They were anathema to the notion of purity to the source.. Since these days it now whatever one likes ... Why Not? Still there is strong evidence that accurate reproduction is favored by most people and Technology and better knowledge of small Acoustics as well as better tools to study their impacts would push aperson toward better tome controls in getting a relatively acurate , favored type of sound .. not one that one just happens to like. . so the tone control needs to be ... well ... acurate. Not establishing its own sound but to get as true to the source as possible considering the room which tends to distort what comes out of the speaker a great deal... I am not sure this Tone control as presented by the OP would be one to tame most room-induced and/or introduced distortion.. if it to add some flavor to the sound, I am sure some would like it .. if we stick however to the notion of High Fidelity as being "fidel" to the source .. allow me to have my serious doubts.. A digital Eq of the kind made by Dirac or Acourate or trinnov would have been more useful .. All that IMHO, IME, YMMV , "If you like then", "it sounds good to your ears" , then ... etc

The problem with any frequency EQ is that it attempts to deal with a time domain problem only using tools in the frequency domain. Although analog EQ is considered by many to be the "pure" way to EQ, it is really the least pure way to EQ since the time domain is mostly neglected with such solutions. Although it is true that EQ CAN have a positive effect in both time and frequency, the best solutions have the ability to correct in both frequency and time/phase.

dallasjustice said:

The problem with any frequency EQ is that it attempts to deal with a time domain problem only using tools in the frequency domain.

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Not so. Equalizers work in the time domain. See Equalizers and Phase Shift and Exposing Equalizer Mythology.

From the former:
“...equalizers work by intentionally shifting phase, and then combining the original signal with the shifted version. In fact, without phase shift they would not work at all!” (Phase is generally defined as the relationship in time (i.e. delay) between two signals).

From the latter:
“Amplitude, phase and time are all inextricably mixed by the physics of sound. One does not exist without the others... It takes phase shift to fix phase shift. [It’s as] simple as that.”

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

That's what I said. There's no question using software that can do both is superior though.

Wayne A. Pflughaupt said:

Not so. Equalizers work in the time domain. See Equalizers and Phase Shift and Exposing Equalizer Mythology.

From the former:
“...equalizers work by intentionally shifting phase, and then combining the original signal with the shifted version. In fact, without phase shift they would not work at all!” (Phase is generally defined as the relationship in time (i.e. delay) between two signals).

From the latter:
“Amplitude, phase and time are all inextricably mixed by the physics of sound. One does not exist without the others... It takes phase shift to fix phase shift. [It’s as] simple as that.”

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

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