Do You ever wish (secretly) that you bought an amp with Tone controls

Warszawa

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  1. No
I never use the tone controls on my Luxman. I've experimented from time to time though and they are done well. Quite subtle. Not like the olden days.

I should probably use some digital EQ to sort out the bass boom from my left speaker but to be honest, I can't be arsed settling for a different digital source just for the feature, then arsing about with a mic and complicated software. And I'm definitely not going to apply AD conversion to my turntable, that's a sin in my book.

Also, a bit of a loose bottom does tend to flatter some of those thinner sounding recordings, and reggae is a hoot.
 
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Tarzan

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  1. Yes
l love knobs- tone control knobs that is, have two amps with them, one of which l normally use the tone controls on the other l do not- weird this hifi turnout.:)
 
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tuga

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I find that the lower the HF distortion in both source, amplification and tweeter, the less need for tone controls (with my system I don't need them).

In other words, if some recordings are unberable to listen to then either the tonal balance is exaggerating the treble, one or three of the above is adding distortion, or both.
 

dari

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Well I did, but the amp sounds better with 'Source Direct'.

I've never used them. Over the decades I've accepted that productions sound very different and just crack on with it.
+ 1

I got speakers which cause no boom in my room (plus I like them for what they do with the rest of the frequency spectrum) and I accept/enjoy recordings for what they are.

Like the other poster - when I had sub I was constantly changing volume, phase, frequency cut off etc... I got rid off it and I am happy :)
 

Tom1980

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I use to tone controls in my preamp because I found out few years ago that my hearing is not as good as it used to be. I no longer hear that well frequencies above 18kHz, therefore I adjusted the treble at 20kHz by 5dB to compensate it.
 

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AJSki2fly

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I Been Reading Sorry :) My Encore 225 Sounds really good with Albums that have been beautifully recorded. For example Sade Albums Love her or hate her Madonna albums. But there are others that Do not sound good. My friend has the opinion That sound quality on albums has a bit to do with musicians and home studios. That there not recording engineers. I listen to some of my many albums and want the the eq moved up a notch. I have pondered this for a while. When I remembered my Bluesound node 2! i been playing music for sometime Straight from my Nas device with my Bluesound off.

So last week i fired up the Blue sound Node 2 and went into Settings/audio and turned on the tone controls. Chose a piece of music i knew well low and behold things sound a lot lot different on those recordings which did not shine before

What prompted this Well.. Reading What I was hoping to find was an answer to my question which was. Amplifier without tone controls. Can the tone be adjusted buy an expert. within the unit can he re- tune a pot with a screw driver. I wanted to know how an amplifier is tuned for music. could I find the answer. No

But i found the link at the bottom, He makes a valid point


https://www.avforums.com/threads/why-all-hi-fi-should-have-tone-controls-including-high-end.2373302/




Your turn Now your thoughts please (Be gentle with me :)
Heresy, you purchase and match other equipment to get the overall tone you want to hear from your system, and then when you get dissatisfied with how it sounds with a particular genre of style of music you buy other equipment or change the amp.:ROFLMAO:
 

CnoEvil

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IMO. Tone controls don't make a good amp sound bad, or a bad amp sound good. Get the amp you like the sound of....if it has tone controls, then happy days.
 

ROOG

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No secret at all, I have EQ in my system and I use it to offset known (measured) room issues.

A room which emphasises bass at 49Hz is not nice and this can be improved using PEQ ‘tone’ control.

Randomly swapping amps isn’t going to correct my room,and choosing speakers which don’t do bass to avoid exciting the 49Hz bass peak means loosing bass generally. Good EQ can be used to selectively deal with issues.
 
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ziggy

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I am a firm believer that less is more where the analogue chain is concerned. Therefore my pre amp does not have tone controls and the direct input is used because my only source is digital.
 

MartinC

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I use DSP that is wildly more capable than basic tone controls. Were I somehow deprived of DSP I would now prefer to have an amp with defeatable tone-controls rather than not, although in the past I never used them when I did.
 
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MVJ

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I have had several amplifiers over the years with tone controls but I don't recall ever using them so no I don't wish I had one now.
 
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Linear

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The first amp I bought had tone controls but I quickly learned that sq was much better with the defeat button pressed.
But then later I tried a schiit loki, excellent thing, sq with it in the loop is just fine.
 
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