Tone controls?
- Thread starter Al M.
- Start date
Hard to argue with this guy. I've been working on the room acoustics. The lean diffusor from Arqen has improved things.
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Eh...I will go without, thank you. A truly great system does not need them.
The truth is that some albums are so horribly recorded, they should not be introduced into a reference system. Reserve those for low level listening on a boombox or equivalent IMO. No amount of EQ will help them. Need an example? Try any one of Adele's albums.
Tom
The truth is that some albums are so horribly recorded, they should not be introduced into a reference system. Reserve those for low level listening on a boombox or equivalent IMO. No amount of EQ will help them. Need an example? Try any one of Adele's albums.
Tom
perhaps, but then great system can be made 'true' with them perhaps ?............. besides not everyone has a perfect room for their perfect 'gear', granted it's all encompassing to be 'truly great' !
I did enjoy his jab at those shunning tone controls and then buying into MIT's 80k speaker cables !
Agreed on the latter part but for the first part? Tell you what, we shall just agree to disagree. I personally do not believe that any tone control gets one any closer to "the truth". An altered frequency spectrum perhaps with better sound to some but with other compromises added into the mix for me. Compromises that I am not personally willing to accept.
Hahaha! Agreed.
Tom
The old style bass and treble controls threw away the baby with the bathwater and analog graphic eqs didnt perform so well either
However we are in the modern age where DSP parametrics can do a lot more good than harm notable in removing low bass peaks..
Add to that there are units like Trinnov that can not only work with amplitude but can correct phase , group delay , impulse , remap speaker positioning and even ameliorate early reflections... these are as far removed from tone controls as a penny farthing is from a veyron...
At the end of it all, its only YOUR ears you have to please and there are many ways to do so , box swapping , rooms , tweaks , dsp , tone controls, drugs etc.. pick your poison
However we are in the modern age where DSP parametrics can do a lot more good than harm notable in removing low bass peaks..
Add to that there are units like Trinnov that can not only work with amplitude but can correct phase , group delay , impulse , remap speaker positioning and even ameliorate early reflections... these are as far removed from tone controls as a penny farthing is from a veyron...
At the end of it all, its only YOUR ears you have to please and there are many ways to do so , box swapping , rooms , tweaks , dsp , tone controls, drugs etc.. pick your poison
First time I played Adele's first album on my living room rig I thought something had gone wrong with the DAC or the tubes were going in the preamp buffer. Sounds great in the car or even an iPad but the recording and/or mastering was rough. //Morten
I do not know about the guy, but the article is extremely poor, filled with misunderstandings about HP and others writings, and even the objectivists are poorly represented. IMHO PSAudio should be more careful about what they post on their site.
why's that ? because he perhaps flies in the face of 'audiofool' ideology ? hey, it's on the internet, it's gotta be true .........
First off, his power problems effect his SQ more than any cabling,recording chain electronics or engineering manipulation. The tape machine used in the recording will add coloration but that is just a small percentage of the sound quality. Most commercial recordings by and large have very good sound.
Even recordings made in the late 1950's sound excellent..i.e. RCA,Living Stereo,Columbia,London,EMI,DG,ect. Those recordings have excellent sound and unless the audio system is capable of matching the recorded noise floor,resolution will mask the clarity of the recording it self. No amount of "tone controls" can add resolution which is key to his problems. I also think digital recordings can be less colored.
As far as EQ and room problems that would be useful,but only as a last resort. In my experience the the dispersion pattern of the speaker can have a dramatic effect on overall SQ and the only way to increase that is to remove the current hash from the audio signal.
If you grill a tough steak,it's still a lousy meal no matter what kind of steak sauce you put on top of it.
No, EQ, particularly using good software like Sonic Studio can help with that. Used it many times at shows with good effect. Also great at flattening speakers with poorly designed crossovers. Tuning a system by ear is fraught with problems. You will never get it right this way.
I am NOT a believer in automatic room correction however. Never heard it work correctly. Better off to tune this manually to get good results everywhere in the room, not just in one listening position.
Steve N.
Empirical audio
Agree Steve, but I am unsure if they have no negatives. I perceive a reduction in soundstage, depth and micro details as soon as I use any kind of EQ. I have tried many on my Mac Mini, and currently use Roon's built in DSP which is very good. But it does loose something. I find it best to use it to a small degree, maybe 3dB max, and watch the levels don't crash through the 0dB limit. I am not sure, but I believe applying ANY DSP is thus resampling the data with the respective loss of doing that, bit like doing a photocopy off a photocopy if you like.
Best way is avoid any EQ if possible. Maybe remove the speaker grills for more transparency, move the speakers for less bass bumps etc.
It's what you are using that is the problem, not EQ DSP software in general. Try the 3 or 4 parametric EQ's with Amarra. Very transparent, as is their volume control, at least up to about -9dB. I know this can work flawlessly.
Everything else, hardware and software that I have tried colors the sound.
Steve N.
Empirical Audio
Thats the point , eq colours the sound by definition.
Roons dsp engine is pretty good .. the results of tweaking can be heard a/bed , turned on or off all on the fly..important..peq, upsampling, headroom management , convolution and and and ..'
The real fly in the oinkment is that you have to digitise your analog and there are a lot of folk who would rather chew off their own arm than do that.....
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