Tone controls? Digital?

[Rare Bird]

I'm not getting personal, no..

Like i said i use tone control because i want to & it's my ears that are getting pleased, i choose to use vintage gear, EQ's, tone controls etc because it gives me more enjoyment than modern boring bleeched systems..

[mattmerr]

Today we live in a digital age. An MP3, CD, SACD will produce 20 Hz just as strongly as 20Khz, plus or minus 0.2 db across the whole audible frequency range. Ruler flat. We are much closer to the original source than ever before. Tone controls could be used, maybe, to make an already good sounding system better, if they are need at all.

Lastly, while the tone control may add a bit of treble or bass, it is also adding another circuit path for the audio signal, therefore it is also taking you a bit more away from the entire audio signal. If I engage a tone control I always sense a veil coming over the music, and do anything I can to avoid that.

CD

That’s my point exactly, do we really need tone controls in systems that can now capture the full frequency range, there shouldn’t really be any need to adjust anything anymore, if my speakers can’t go down to say 35Hz and I have a AIFF of modern digital/electronic music that goes below that range, boosting the bass wont help me to hear what my speakers cant produce.

My last point is, on my amplifier I have a bypass tone controls button, why is it that even when the bass and treble are set to zero and the bypass button is switched off there is still a change in sound, its obvious something is going on, the signal is being adjusted somewhere in the path.

@Andre, I understand that you are a vintage hi-fi fan and probably you do need to use tone controls, if I remember rightly I used to when I was listing to vinyl and cassette, i have nothing against that, but i thought the point of the original post in the The Digital Impression was regarding tone controls being used within the digital domain, not analogue.

[Codifus]

That’s my point exactly, do we really need tone controls in systems that can now capture the full frequency range, there shouldn’t really be any need to adjust anything anymore, if my speakers can’t go down to say 35Hz and I have a AIFF of modern digital/electronic music that goes below that range, boosting the bass wont help me to hear what my speakers cant produce.........

TOTALLY, Dude

I've grown to appreciate also, that what makes great music so great, is the harmonics, the representation of all the other frequencies besides the primary frequency.

There's this track I really love, "Finck it up" from the Phillippe Saisse Trio. It has a wicked and lively bass track. No ordinary bass, though.

David Finck plays a double bass. Because you "pluck" the strings, the bass note it produces is different from the usual suspects. As my stereo system has become more resolute, I've been able to hear more and more of this special instrument and it has made me all the more appreciative. The double bass has this "twang" that can only be appreciated fully when you deliver the music with the flattest frequency response, preserving the levels of its harmonic frequencies. Adding bass via tone controls emphasizes too strongly one frequency, making this sound boomy and less sophisticated.

CD

[John]

Andre if tone controls work for you then thats great I am just as happy without tone controls and using valves and no bleeched sound. They are just different paths

[Themis]

I've said this before, I'm sure:
The discussion about EQ, room correction put aside, and high fidelity resumes to this:

If you're not the mastering engineer of each album, then you don't know how the music you listen to was meant to sound. Let alone if it's more "accurate".
Accuracy is a personal sight of things, and who can tell whether +2dB at 150Hz is actually nearer to the performed instrument ? I can't.

So, it's all personal.

Nevertheless, a lot of people (me included) consider that the mastering engineer meant to have the material reproduced by the flattest reproduction system possible.
If this is true for most albums, then it's better to leave EQ aside.

In any case, I was not there, I know nothing of how most of what I listen was actually recorded and mixed. So, why bother ?

In other words, we're probably all "accurate" from a floating subjective point of view.

[dave2010]

It’s just common sense and physics the more the signal is processed the worse it will be at the other end, you can’t add to or improve something that isn’t already there.

Just like using filters on an image to bump up the saturation tone controls are just sugar coating for the ears.

In theory you are right, but in practice not. What you are saying is that you can never improve the data by filtering, and I agree with that. There will nearly always be a loss of information.

However ..... when we are dealing with perception, there can be a significant change - an improvement, and sometimes that's worth having. I'll construct an example for you as a counterexample. I make a new digital recording. Maybe I'm a modern composer, or maybe I'm just a hopeless recording nut - you're not sure. My recording has 1. a high quality digitally recorded piece perhaps from CD 2. Clicks at random time intervals 3. A high pitched whistle at a fixed frequency known to me. 4. Some low frequency bumping noises.

If you assume I'm a composer, then removing the high pitched whiistle, the bumping noises and the clicks reduces the fidelity of my "composition". If you assume that I just made a bad job of sticking things together but you want to hear the piece, then removing all the extraneous noises can sometimes be done well (very) and improves one's appreciation of the music.

I know someone who is very good at digital photography touch up. I've sent him pictures which I'd already played with, yet on nearly every occasion he produced much better results. The argument that he was removing data recorded by the camera is OK, but the results speak for themselves.

Common sense must also take into account experience.

[dave2010]

Dimitri

I've said this before, I'm sure:
The discussion about EQ, room correction put aside, and high fidelity resumes to this:

If you're not the mastering engineer of each album, then you don't know how the music you listen to was meant to sound. Let alone if it's more "accurate".
Accuracy is a personal sight of things, and who can tell whether +2dB at 150Hz is actually nearer to the performed instrument ? I can't.

So, it's all personal.

Nevertheless, a lot of people (me included) consider that the mastering engineer meant to have the material reproduced by the flattest reproduction system possible.
If this is true for most albums, then it's better to leave EQ aside.

In any case, I was not there, I know nothing of how most of what I listen was actually recorded and mixed. So, why bother ?

In other words, we're probably all "accurate" from a floating subjective point of view.

I don't disagree with you totally, and I normally use equipment without tone controls.

Sometimes, with older recordings there are aspects which I think can be tweaked by the end user to give greater pleasure, or at least less distress.

There is subjectivity in recording and listening, and if an end user wants to play around to produce a sound which he/she likes should that person then be told "but that's not what the engineer wanted"? Anyway, shouldn't it be the musicians who decide? Or the composer?

Back to my photograph analogy. If I showed you the pictures of (say) Pingyao as they came out of the camera, you'd find them really dull - as I do. Most people would like them tweaked a bit. It's perhaps possible to tweak them to the extent that you wouldn't realise that the place really had very poor visibility, and you might think that the colours were really vibrant (er ... no!).

You're right about personal preferences, but whose should they be? The end user surely in a domestic environment. Re what is realiity - we can't tell.

In some recordings we can make some assumptions about how things were done, and if we find that we like to tweak things a bit isn't that OK?

The reason I don't use tone controls is that on the whole I find the sound quality much better without them. For listening to older recordings (e.g remastered 78s transfered to digital or even original 78s) it does seem that there may be a range of preferences - usually a balance between hiss levels and "liveliness". Such recordings may be reissued by different companies, and it seems to be accepted that the reissues sound different, with sometimes a fairly clear general preference for one over others. There are still some older recordings which are worth listening to.

[The Vinyl Adventure]

This is how I see it - as a photographer I understand the photography analogy so I shall continue with it
as an "artist" I take a photo with the knowledge that I'm going to process it, I have a high end digital camera that is set to take pictures that look flat. This gives me a much greater scope to improve the image - take a dynamic image and risk loosing highlight or shadow detail - take a undynamic image and the contrast can be added if it's needed.
If I create a picture and then someone else messes with it and tells me it's better I'd probably take offence (unless they had asked if it was ok first).
So I agree in those terms eq is bad!
But of someone took my image and looked at it in a room lit with blue light it would look wrong, if they took my image and added a filter to warm it up so it looked right in that blue lit room then I would concider that fine... Now they might not get it to how I intended but they were trying to get more enjoyment out of it in that particular room ... You follow my analogy I'm sure!
If eq is required to increase the enjoyment of music in a room that otherwise hinders that enjoyment, then I see no problem as long as the intention was to return the nutrality and not something else

[The Grand Wazoo]

But of someone took my image and looked at it in a room lit with blue light it would look wrong, if they took my image and added a filter to warm it up so it looked right in that blue lit room then I would concider that fine... Now they might not get it to how I intended but they were trying to get more enjoyment out of it in that particular room ... You follow my analogy I'm sure!
If eq is required to increase the enjoyment of music in a room that otherwise hinders that enjoyment, then I see no problem as long as the intention was to return the nutrality and not something else

Hamish has identified and perfectly described the crux of the biscuit (to paraphrase FZ). You may (like me) not have a use for it yourself, but there's no denying that there are certain circumstances where this is a compromise to fidelity that must be conceded to, in order to create a more acceptable presentation. This is the point that the anti- crowd refuse to accept.

[mattmerr]

I take a photo with the knowledge that I'm going to process it, I have a high end digital camera that is set to take pictures that look flat. This gives me a much greater scope to improve the image - take a dynamic image and risk loosing highlight or shadow detail - take a undynamic image and the contrast can be added if it's needed.

Therefore you might as well say I’m buying this CD with the intention of equalizing it as I wont be happy with the sound if it’s flat, adjusting it to suit your ears disregarding the true sound of that music.

That’s not what true Hi-Fi is about, it’s about keeping that original image how it was the day you took it, if the shadows aren't to your liking tough, its as it was on the day, a true representation of that time and space, just like the un-equalized audio recording.

If you are unhappy with the sound in your room, then your room is at fault not the recording. I fail to see why anyone would spend huge amounts of money on Hi-End equipment stick the speakers against the walls and use tone controls to turn down the boomy bass. Where is the sense in that?

There seems to be people here tripping over their own feet to justify the use of tone controls. If you are after true High-Fidelity then tone controls are not the answer, they never have been and never will, we all read the magazines, articles, reviews, better equipment is the answer for a system that is lacking.