restorer-john
Addicted Member
Go hard or go home 
Why are they building Preamps without Bass & Treble controls?
- Thread starter Bill Haywood
- Start date
- Status
Bill Haywood
Member
We don’t all hear the same what sounds great to you may sound ok to me. It’s like do you like sugar with your coffee or not. So the tone controls are my sugar with or without. I like the option that’s all I am saying.
Bill Haywood
Member
How do you know before you buy? Not trying to be a smart ass but a legitimate question.I pretty much avoid this issue by not bothering with lousy recordings.
Bill Haywood
Member
Goodnight guys got to work to buy more stuff. Had fun
jazzmans
Super Member
i'd rather have my lousy recordings of, say, Blind Blake, or Blind Lemon Jefferson then a modern musician doing his songs.I pretty much avoid this issue by not bothering with lousy recordings.
The original smiley face lol, I think we've all been there at one time or another.
tubeyea
Active Member
Not sure if the FVA mod changed the profile, but the stock bass control is +/- 16 db at 50 hz. You always need that kind of boost? Holy cow!
With the HT, I needed to attenuate 53 hz by 9 db and 62 hz by 6 db and still cannot entirely get rid of the 3 db rise at 50 hz and still have a null at twice that frequency. Perhaps your challenge is a severe room null - which is effectively a black hole. You can pour boost all the want in those cases and really get nowhere.
Schiit offers the Loki for those who wish to add tone control functionality to preamps lacking such.
I think I might buy that Loki, it’s inexpensive and worth looking into, my Modwright pre doesn’t have tone controls and truthfully I've never felt the need but the Loki is so inexpensive if I don’t like it in the main system it can go in the office system or my closet of gadgets.
I have to ask: what modern tube preamp is no better than a Dynaco PAT-4?
Yep this is perfectly understandable.
This is understandable also and you do have options.
What's not understandable is saying manufacturers are eliminating tone controls because they are trying to rip us off, or they are pinching pennies and charging us a lot anyway. It's a known fact the shortest path the signal takes improves SQ. The less switches in a box reduces noise getting in the signal path. So most TOTL or flagship in a real good manufactures line up generally don't have tone controls built in. They are trying to build a specific unit to have the best qualities for sound alone.
Not all media is the same, not all systems are the same, a title might sound bad on one system and good on another. A EQ is only masking the bad, it's still there but while it's filtering what one perceives as bad it's also filtering the music in that frequency range that's being compensated for.
If you go back and listen to those two vids I posted you can hear the difference a different amp and speakers made with one track on a record. In the first one I knew it sounded bassy and at around 1.25 minutes I tried to turn it up a little and the bass got overwhelming so I turned it down as it was distorting. The second vid was a different amp and speaker setup and nothing else was changed but it sounded far far better. The fact is, it was my system and the media that wasn't working good together until I matched the system with the media better all without tone controls.
darkblue94
The Devil made me do it.
Yeah I actually do have a few examples of lousy recordings and I do listen to them once in a while as they are.
darkblue94
The Devil made me do it.
Research and experience.
It's amazing how better equipment can sound better, simply amazing, funny how it works that way lol.
And not just better, but better synergy will also play a roll eh? Hyper analytical speakers with like amplification....iiieeeeeee fingernails on a chalkboard.
Yep me too, but I do have the option to switch speakers and amps to fit the music better, or even loading and gain when playing records.
So true
That Mavin Gaye WGO one step, people where complaining it was really bass boosted, I can totally see that. At least with one out of three amp/speaker options I have it was, the other two it sounds great. So it begs the question, was it MFSL fault in mastering or the way I set my system up, or choice of what I am using.
Better only works if it's matched up good. I have never found one speaker or amp that does it all really good. This is why I have one system with three different types of speakers and then I try to match amps to them, or the other way around. But all my front end and preamp stays the same without tone controls or any EQing.
Hence my comment about synergy eh?
The reason the Belles is connected to the Kenwood driving the AR's. Not that the Kenwood driving the speakers wasn't great, most would have stopped there, but having the capability to try different amps as you know gives options, always good to have options.
As you my pres remain the same, tone controls defeated, but my sources could change.
Last edited:
OMGCat!
Super Member
I don't use tone controls because they never adjust only what I feel needs adjusting, rather a too wide range which almost always sounds much worse (to me) than leaving them flat. It's like needing a tiny pinch of salt but only having all spice to put in a recipe. You get the salt but also a whole bunch of extra stuff that you don't want.
Something like a parametric eq would be better but I don't have one of those to play with and don't really feel the need. Getting the speakers positioned right and the room sounding good (using REW and a calibrated mic) has 95% of my music sounding great. The rest is what it is and I'm fine living with it. I have tried fiddling with tone controls on lousy recordings in the past and most times just get irritated and put them back to flat.
That's just me though and I don't pretend to have a one size fits all answer.
Something like a parametric eq would be better but I don't have one of those to play with and don't really feel the need. Getting the speakers positioned right and the room sounding good (using REW and a calibrated mic) has 95% of my music sounding great. The rest is what it is and I'm fine living with it. I have tried fiddling with tone controls on lousy recordings in the past and most times just get irritated and put them back to flat.
That's just me though and I don't pretend to have a one size fits all answer.
Yeah, but I take it a step further, or I should say two steps further past equipment synergy.
1) Matching the type of music with the speakers and amps since I have that selectable option with a flip of a switch.
2) Changing loading and gain on my vinyl front end staging as well as a couple different DAC options with the flip of a switch to match the masterings better.
Like here, this is the same setup that WGO sounded bad with, but the MLs sound good with mystic music, as the room glows. I'm walking around here and it still sounds good everywhere and at the end as I sit down in the sweet spot it's just better.
Here we have the same music, disregard the table setup as it's still staged the same as my SOTAs and a Sumiko EVO III. But it sound really bad because of the ADS 1230s and even worse walking around.
And this is why I don't mind when a mastering lab takes a master tape and records a high rez file to work in the digital realm. They can pin prick out sibilance or other abnormalities for a split second instead of filtering out that entire frequency range through the whole track with a analogue De-S-er.
I also take that extra step/steps, in the media rm there's one pre, five separate power amps, 3 subs, multiple different pair of speakers plus multichannel, different sources etc etc, all accessible from the flip of a few switches lol. We're thinking along the same lines, and this is the flexibility of separates I was extolling in another thread before it was locked.
The room's original design goal, one complete 2 channel system dedicated to music playback, another complete system multichannel home theater. But all are interconnected through the pre so different amps and speakers can serve as the mains for 2 channel listening with any of the same sources. This makes A/B testing a simple matter. If I bring a new set of speakers, or equipment home I can insert it into the system/systems again for easy A/B testing.
Last edited:
Bill Haywood
Member
Remember what I said it is just my opinion and the way I hear it. So that being said not gonna throw that product under the bus on here.
- Status
