Tone control
Join Our Community Subscribe to Paul's PostsThere was a time in our HiFi history that the ability to electronically control music’s tone was necessary. Necessary because the entire chain of electronics and speakers were bad enough to warrant their intrusion.
Sure, many bemoan the lack of bass and treble controls, even full band graphic equalizers, but for the most part, we neither miss them nor need them.
And that’s the point. Our equipment’s gotten so much better as to obviate the need for tone controls.
The crutches of the past don’t apply to the equipment of today.
Yet fond memories of their power linger on.
I got away with no tone controls (in fact no pre-amp) for decades, but with the advent of aging ears, resulting in the higher frequencies in the audio spectrum noticeably attenuating, I find that a variable treble gain (+1.5db up to around +10dB) is now mandatory for me for 50% of the recordings from the 1960’s, 70’s & 80’s that I like to listen to.
I would never use an EQ back in the day; they just added heaps of distortion & destroyed any chance of a decent soundstage (3D holographic or otherwise) & besides analogue EQ’s from the last millennia are not necessary when your ears are working perfectly, ie. 45yo & younger.
Less (interference) is always more (fidelity) in audio, until your tympanic membranes or your cochlear or the tiny little ‘hairs’ therein or the anvil, stirrup & hammer or all of them start to become less flexible, less sensitive or (in the case of the tiny hairs) just less.
If you have done a lot of listening in your life as either an audiophile, an audio-enthusiast or just a plain audio-nut, then you will know how something that you’ve listened to your whole life should (does) sound, whether it’s live or canned, & therefore you will definitely notice when those higher frequencies that were once ‘there’ are now attenuated.
Of course no-one makes an amplifier with just a treble gain control, so it’s Bass & Treble +/- 10dB as a bear minimum.
To quote Arnold Schwarzenegger, “Getting old sucks!”
Because it now means that I have to use an amplifier with at least one tone control, but more than likely two, from here on.
Some of the old audiophile ‘purists’ will proclaim that they still don’t need tone controls, even though they can’t hear anything over 7kHz, because they can “remember what those high frequencies sound like”
(God help them when dementia starts creeping in as well)
There are so many responses that I could give to that load of bunk;
however I will leave it up to guys to consider what you think about the the above-quoted response.
Happy listening! 🙂
Suggest you think about trying some hearing aids. In addition to you HiFi, they will brighten the rest of your life as well. Modern aids are very sophisticated, designed for your hearing loss and offer an excellent alternative to reduced sensitivity of certain frequencies.
Thanks for the suggestion coppy.
I can hear perfectly well…a pin drop in a room…directionality…subtle changes…
It’s only that I need a little ‘kick’ in the HF’s on some recordings.
Hearing Aids vs. treble boost on my amplifier…
That might be like cracking a walnut with a sledgehammer.
I’ll wait until ‘PS Audio’ makes hearing aids…
Although that could take forever 😉
As a fellow member of the over 45yo club….
Hey Paul – if its not too late for the Audiophile Guide book, can you put a “hearing test” on the companion CD from Octave? Something users could use to discover what frequencies are noticeably more or less audible to our own personal set of ears. Possible?
Sure, many bemoan the lack of bass and treble controls, even full band graphic equalizers, but for the most part, we neither miss them nor need them.
And that’s the point. Our equipment’s gotten so much better as to obviate the need for tone controls.
The crutches of the past don’t apply to the equipment of today.
Not so fast Paul:
Love ya Paul but strongly disagree here Paul…
For one defeatable tone controls are a must.
There are recordings that don’t need tome control adjustments, but there are many
that either are too anemic to mid bass heavy, too tizzy on top and here is where tone controls
serve their wonderful purpose.
While my Wyred4 Sound STP SE Stage 2 is awesomely resolving , but it cannot correct for recording deficiencies. My Emotiva XSP1 Gen 2 fully differential has defeatable tone contols and use my Emo more of the time because of the defeatable tone controls.
Look at Accuphase preamps, they are all balanced and with defeatble tone controls
and phase reverse control as well. Accuphase is no slouch. Then there is Luxman
and again you find tone controls, and with Yamaha preamps as well. Include
McIntosh here as well
If you don’t like tone controls well then that is for you…just don’t pontificate that.
Speaker cables, interconnects, power cables all have tone control effects one way
or another….just a different form of tone control we use to seek out a better soundstage to the individual liking…..
Personally I eschew preamps that do not have tone controls.
There now, had my .02 say
Best wishes Paul
I second the comments about the value of defeatable tone controls. I will not buy a preamp without them. For one, my Aeon Flow/Schiit Jotunheim headphone setup requires a bass boost. I only occasionally use tone controls to improve the sound of recordings. My McIntosh and Accuphase preamps do the job nicely. No bare-bones for me.
Great job poking the bear, Paul!
RD Coleman
Tone controls seem quite useful for mid-Fi systems. My old Harmon Kardon AVR 120 Receiver, which has both an AC receptacle and bass/treble tone controls and I experimented with them greatly. A nice memory, but one I can definitely leave behind me.
I’m more of a purist these days when it comes to my audio. I don’t like or feel the need to EQ at all. In the end to my ears it never works out. Whenever you stretch a particular frequency beyond the range for what the equipment is capable of it winds up usually sounding like shit. Maybe exciting at first listen, but after spending time with EQ bands makes the music sound pretty artificial. I get why some people really like tone controls and other manipulations in Audio, but I most importantly get why purist don’t. For instance if I had even a pair of 30 thousand dollar Speakers I wouldn’t be EQ’ing or tone controlling them.
I use the fine EQ adjustments in Roon to compensate for my hearing loss, which affects my ability to hear frequencies around 4kHz. I can hear higher and lower frequencies ok. So far I have found the overall experience is better than not using EQ and is also better than using my hearing aids instead of EQ. Does anyone have any other ways of compensating for hearing loss while listening to music?
I purchased a tone control from Schiit Audio. It has 4 bands and is reasonably priced. The tonal quality is excellent and you purchase direct from the company’s website. I suffer from tinitus and I know I used to hear more details in the music. Now when listening to music I feel eighteen again. Hope this is helpful.
The ROON parametric equalizer can be really helpful in the way Bengorman is using it. I was surprised to find it deep down in the ROON settings and I think that it should be used judiciously at first so as not to wind up over your head trying to understand how something that started off on a positive note turned sour and I needed to back step a bit to recover and return to a better place audibly. I think that once you learn how to use this parametric equalizer properly it can be extremely helpful. I have my settings locked in and I seem to be in a good place at the moment. I don’t think that I will mess around with the PE anymore.
I was never against tone controls in principle, they could compensate for some aspects of room response, but I used them less, and finally not at all, as the years went by. On current equipment activating them, even on a supposedly neutral setting, seems to result in a noticeable degradation of sound quality. The equalizer will be back again, only it will be known as DSP.
Doesn’t every serious active subwoofer design mandatorily features smart EQing via an internal DSP? 🙂 Thus why not optimize the output of the main speakers?
So what about Motown music for example? A treasure chest genre full of great songwriting, melodies and lyrics! But most Motown recordings sound flat and anemic. I find most songs in this genre only listenable at low volume. As you increase volume, the mid range becomes very forward and unpleasant.
I agree that they should not be used in attempt to make cheap gear sound better. But aren’t tone controls still a valid tool to help make bad recordings more palatable?
As a compromise, what if you offered tone controls that ONLY cut (no boosting). Wouldn’t that allow for some user “taming” of the middle without artificially boosting highs and lows? That’s what I do on my DJ mixer when playing gigs with pro PA systems. Of course, that is not an audiophile environment but it does help keep ears from bleeding.
It’s for sure correct that usual tone controls are harmful and should be avoided in high end.
I think it’s not correct that there’s generally no demand anymore for certain tonality adjustments and even less correct, that this is because our equipment got better.
The widely known benefit of DSP use in terms of optimizations towards room acoustic problems, the tonality problems of people after switching equipment or even just firmware, the frustration of people with tonality problems after buying more revealing gear, the frustration of people when combining listening to audiophile recordings AND inferior ones….all this imo is rather a reason why the problem got bigger with improving and more resolving gear than smaller.
The hint “buy better equipment and your tonality problems will be solved (better)”, always just helped the manufacturer’s cash flow.
“And that’s the point. Our equipment’s gotten so much better as to obviate the need for tone controls.
The crutches of the past don’t apply to the equipment of today.
Yet fond memories of their power linger on.”
This post suggests tone controls were a damage limitation exercise. That was the case until the 1970s and was more to do with the noise from 78’s and the quality of vinyl rather than the audio equipment.
40 years ago Quad made arguably the most tonally accurate speakers in the world and highly accurate amplifiers, which sold in vast quantities, and are still very successful to this day (in updated versions- Quad ESL 2912 and the Quad Artera range). The pre-amp has a form of tone control called TILT, which changes the bass and treble at the same time and thereby maintaining tonal balance by changing the slope over the entire frequency range. You can read the details here:
https://www.kenrockwell.com/audio/quad/34-preamplifier.htm
The original version sold 40,000 units. It has been implemented in the current Quad Artera range of products.
There is an interview of one of the principal designers, Roger Hill, in Ken Kessler’s Quad book, in which he says that by that time in the late 1970s normal separate bass and treble tone controls were only included because the marketing department said amplifiers would sell better with them, so they were included, but with a cancel facility.
The pianist Glenn Gould, who knew a thing or two about recordings, describes a formative experience in the use of audio technology when given an acetate of a CBS Radio performance of Mozart played win a bass-heavy piano. When playing it “he discovered that by suppressing the bass and boosting the treble he could obtain the sonorities he wanted but could not get on the studio piano. From that moment on Glenn Gould has not been able to accept the doctrine that technology is dehumanizing.”
Steven,
Good for India saving the game,
even if Vihari & Ashwin had to bat like David Boon.
I had one of those Quad preamplifiers with the TILT control and I liked the concept but felt the implementation could be better. Mark Levinson made something called the Cello Palette which was much better made, but way overly complex. Finally, I found the ideal unit in the pro studio world, the HLT 2A made by Tube Tech. Perfect for everything from Motown to Mercury Living Presence, yet completely by passable for recordings that don’t need tweaking.
Ken Rockwell 😀
That’s your take…but Accuphase, Luxman, Yamaha, Mcintosh don’t support the no tone controls,
tone controls bad for music position….
I agree with Accuphase, Luxman, Yamaha, and Mcintosh…
and eschew preamps that do not include defeatable tone contols.
I am very glad that my Emotiva XSP1 Gen 2 fully differential preamp does have
defeatable tone controls…there are music albums that need tone controls
to sound their best.
You may not think as much…but with interconnects, speaker cables, and
power cords you are pretty much doing the same thing….a form of tone control
Best wishes
Not my take – from Ken Kessler’s book on Quad and Geoffrey Payzant’s book on Glenn Gould.
The TILT is not a conventional tone control.
I hope my power cables and speaker cables are not tone controls. If they are, might as well give up on audio. Don’t have interconnects. All-in-one unit has tone controls, plus speaker correction and programmable DSP.
Though the flexibility and non invasive nature of DSP available to us now via Dirac and similar or even Roon’s basic parametric EQ functions sure is handy for on the fly tweaks…
As a midfi guy,with tone controls, i do enjoy the boost at low volumes. Pretty sure I don’t hear above10-12khz.
Do you also feel the same way about the advent of today’s DSP engines ?
I would say that may be true from a test bench persepctive but your leaving out the effects of the room and, as well all know, speaker drivers are not perfect no matter how much better they have become. Without the ability to modify frequency, what arrives at the ears will not be the same as what leaves the electronics.
When I read Absolute Sound or Stereophile, how many times do they point out that the great equipment we now have (in agreement with Paul’s observation- or my interpretation of his observation!- that the development in technologies gets closer to the straight wire with gain holy grail) exposes the flaws in the original recordings? Some of them just were either not recorded or mastered properly. I think a good compromise is to have defeatable tone controls, to take them out of the path when not needed, but then to switch them in on the recordings that need some tweaking.
Paul, as one of the older members here, more so than yourself, I have a different perspective.
I remember well when “hi-end” manufacturers began eliminating tone controls and filter switches. They promoted that as an attempt to achieve a purer sound, less complexity in the signal path.
Fair enough, but volume controls for example are now far superior to those simple pots back in the ’50s and ’60s. So why can’t tone controls be produced with similar quality improvements? To say, “Our equipment’s gotten so much better as to obviate the need for tone controls.” ignores the most basic element in home-based listening — the impacts of the room on the audio system. Quality tone controls may compensate for some of that.
The problem is, the harm of tone controls doesn’t mainly lie in the quality of the pots, but in the phase effects of the frequency tweaking as far as I know.
Recordings are all over the place, some good, some not so good. Tone controls come in useful when I come across a poor recording.
This is exactly the point. For all the “purists” out there, if we follow the mantra of no tone controls a lot of the music I like to listen to will sound like “pure” crap. I love my old Carver preamp with tone controls to make the smallest of corrections for these bad recordings.
Sometimes I think Paul posts things to be provocative of discussion just to see what people have to say. I can’t blame him for that, I do it myself and it creates these interesting exchanges.
So I’ll stick my 2 million cents in to keep the snowball rolling down the mountainside and who knows, it might just create an avalanche. As long as I’m not the one buried under it.
Timbre is one aspect of tone even though they are used interchangeably. Tone also includes loudness, perceived power, many factors but today it will mean timbre, the spectral voice of musical instruments that distinguish them from each other.
Once upon a time when I was young, an audiophile and knew absolutely nothing I would have agreed with Paul. After all my only source of information was the magazines, ads, and other unreliable places and people to learn things from. Connect a phonograph cartridge to a preamplifier, a power amplifier, and speakers all with flat frequency responses and inaudible noise and distortion and problem solved, the perfect sound system. And that is what all of the manufacturers claimed about their equipment in their ad copy. The magazines measured them and published the results and damned if it wasn’t pretty close to the truth. The speaker with the flattest frequency response at the time was Infinity Servo Statik. They loved it. How could I argue with such results from “experts?” BTW, in a letter I think to High Fidelity Magazine or whoever performed the measurements and wrote the article Arnie Nudell recommended that to drive the difficult midrange electrostatic panels he recommend Crown DC300. Yep, THAT amplifier. Well at least they didn’t blow up the way other high powered amplifiers like Phase Linear did. If nothing else they were bullet proof and I’d guess most of them now 50 years old still work. Those Crown amplifiers take a licking and keep on ticking. Targeted at a professional market they have to be priced competitively, reliable, perform to the satisfaction of the users, and in the event of a problem service has to be fast, easy, and a real fix on the first try. DC300 was introduced in 1968 while Crown was still making tape decks in Indiana before the plant burned down.
It wasn’t until the 1980s that I became increasingly aware, sensitive to, and critical of the musical tone including timbre of acoustic instruments. By 1989 I had a sound system with speakers that easily covered the full audible range, a CD player with A-B repeat, one of the few in its day that didn’t have that harsh treble sound I call metallic and some call glassy (it was expensive) and a dual 10 band graphic equalizer with a pink noise generator, microphone, and spectrum analyzer display. So I could make the frequency response of the system anything I wanted it to be. But after years of trying I couldn’t get a single recording to sound right. Nada. What a frustration. Eventually I figured out why and how to solve the problem but it turned out to be much more complicated than I had originally thought.
So do you audiophiles adjust the frequency response of your sound systems? What do you think those audiophile wires do? Why do you describe some speakers and amplifiers as warm and others analytical? Why do you have to mix and match your equipment through trial and error to achieve what you call synergy? Why are those crossover networks so complicated? What really happens in the analog domain when Ted changes the software to Direct Stream (at least that doesn’t cost you anything)? Could you achieve the same results by adjusting an equalizer? Not much profit in that. Yes I know it would ruin the “imaging” or “sound stage.” That’s what the industry will tell you. Using one effectively requires a lot of acquired skill. Typically adjusting a 10 band equalizer to my satisfaction takes about two years. And to make matters worse a second equalizer is needed for each recording because their spectral balance and therefore tone are all different for every recording so once I get it right I have to write the settings down for that recording on that system.
So I finally got Billy Taylor’s recording on which he played a Steinway D to sound like a Steinway D and it is a truly magnificent sounding instrument. How does it compare to Marian McPartland’s Baldwin D10? That is also a very great piano. You might say the D10 is more neutral and very slightly more brilliant. But the Steinway has an incomparable warmth the Baldwin can’t match. If the sound is described as a steel fist in a velvet glove then the Steinway has more velvet. Since I have one of each in my house I have a real live basis for comparison of these two different families of instruments.
Paul, I hope your new Steinway piano is up and ready for action. How does it sound to your ears. Magnificent I expect and hope you really enjoy and appreciate it. It’s the piano most professional pianists prefer to perform on. Next see how closely Gus can come to duplicating its sound on a recording. Don’t be surprised or disappointed if what comes out is “canned music.” This is a far more difficult and complicated problem than it appears not only to most audiophiles but also to most audio engineers.
I wish someone would read up and find out what the Fletcher Munson curves represent rather than use the term inappropriately.
Also how loudness grows should be understood.
Not the way it’s thrown around here!
Pitiful!
Larry
Larry, I’d be glad to explain the Fletcher Munson curves in simple language. They give you a lot more information than is usually gleaned from them. I’ve picked this one out for a reason although they will all look similar.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Fletcher-Munson-Curve_fig2_303973465
The basic idea is to relate the perceived loudness at different frequencies to the measured loudness. This of course differs from one individual to another but these are typical for most people.
The background grid shows the frequency in a logarithmic scale on the horizontal line at the bottom. The vertical axis shows loudness as it would be measured, the actual loudness. The curves on the graph show lines of perceived equal loudness.
The bottom most line is the threshold of sound, the softest sound you can hear. As you can see bass frequencies have to get pretty loud just to hear them. So for the threshold of hearing, the softest sound you can hear according to this graph at 20 hz where your hearing is least sensitive has to be 80 db louder than it is at 3 to 4 khz where it is most sensitive. the same is true but to a much lesser degree at high frequencies above 4 khz. For this reason when listening to music at soft loudness levels the loudness contour switch if it is on the preamplifier boosts the bass so you can hear it and on some systems the treble as well.
Notice that in the bass the curves are squashed together much more than a other frequencies. that means that once you can hear it, a little increase in actual bass loudness goes a long way to making it perceived to be louder than at higher frequencies. therefore adjusting the loudness of bass tones is critical to keeping them in proportion to the rest of the musical tones at whatever loudness you are listening at.
At the very top curve on most graphs is a curve at about 120 db. This is the threshold of pain where sound is experienced as pain as well as sound. The reason I chose this graph is because on the right side the dotted line shows you that all of the curves rise vertically at 20 khz. At this point the curves for the threshold of hearing and the threshold of pain intersect. This explains why you can’t hear anything above 20 khz.
Very good point Soundmind…Paul might just be stirring the pot…he might need more bass or
perhaps treble…pot stirring you see!!!
Maybe Paul’s pots are beef stew needing more pots still …
SM
Apologies. Please read my response to yesterday’s posting on caffeine
Cheers.
Oh my God, I bought a graphic equalizer!
Not for my system (nothing wrong with it), my room or my music. I bought it for me and my 78 year old ears. I have a recent audiogram that suggest that I might as sell my tweeters for all the good they do me. My downward slope begins about 2k and its down quite a bit at 8k where the reading stops. Besides my audiogram I have noticed the sounds of certain instruments diminished or absent in familiar recordings. For example, I used to hear a lightly struck cymbal on my recording of Ravel’s La Valse. Its just not there. A harpsichord is a no show on some early music.
I bought the dbx 1231 Dual-Channel, 31-Band Equalizer.
It meets my absolute requirement: balanced in and balanced out.
It’s all good …enjoy your equalizer…recording studios seem to ..
As mentioned above, yes, the equipment has progressed to point of not needing any EQ controls….but MUSIC has not. There is a lot of very good music that is recorded like crap and could really use a little help. Is that not purist? Probably, but I really don’t want to get locked in any elitist “Uber-Audiophile” mindset that denigrates my ability to enjoy my music. Defeatable tone controls just make sense.
The tone including the timbre of a musical instrument as you hear it depends to a great degree on how sound is propagated by the source into space and what the acoustics of the room does to it between the time it is launched and the time it reaches your ears. This is the reason why John Atkinson couldn’t duplicate the sound of a Steinway D piano in a live versus recorded demo in Maryland he described 29 minutes into an interview with Home Theater Geeks episode 84 and this was with the speakers in the same room as the piano. Not only did he fail but when his audience tried to explain it to him he didn’t understand it. Worst of all he didn’t even hear it which shows how flawed he is as a critical listener. He’s hardly alone in this industry. In comparison to the real piano the speakers launched their sound with nearly 100% difference meaning distortion and that’s in the same room. Now imagine trying to duplicate what a much larger room would do to sound compared to what your small listening room does to it, the larger room being 100, 200, 500 times larger than your room and designed for the sound to be heard in it. There is no comparison and this is one of the reasons the current technology is IMO a total failure. BTW, I’ve been experimenting with this problem for nearly 50 years.
You want to know how good is your system? As you say, you can’t reproduce a hall, but hear this. They are not produced, just a few microphones in a small room:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JODaYjDyjyQ
If they are not there with you, you have problems.
The purist are snake oil guys that miss out on what we knew all along….defeatable tone controls
be very good …
Tone controls are not a very mid fi thing….Tell Accuphase, Luxman, Yamaha and Mcintosh
their preamps are mid fi…they will laugh back…wit no regrets
Where in the audio chain is EQ adjustment the most effective and least damaging to the signal in terms of distortion? At the source, at the amps or at the speaker? Is EQ adjustment built into a piece of gear better than a separate component that requires an additional pair of cables? There is probably not a right answer, since there are so many variables. My experience with analog EQ’s has been between the source and the amp, and in both cases I could not live with the added noise. It was like introducing a cheap preamp. The best EQ adjustment is probably in the digital domain as part of the digital source equipment. The Hauptwerk digital pipe organ program that I use allows just that. All the ranks and pipes in a stored recording can be singly or collectively digitally EQ’d to suit the listener’s preference.
The worst place for equalization is at the output stage of an amplifier in the speaker wires and in the crossover network. To keep equalization and tone control circuits out of the safe zone before the power amplifier speaker designers and experimenters with wires create absurd complex reactive loads for amplifiers to get their speakers to sound the way they want them to. This is why you need a $10,000 amplifier instead of a $1000 amplifier to handle that crap without distorting or blowing up. Worse yet as the amplitude increases the crossover behavior of the circuit changes because heating the voice coils changes their DC resistance by increasing it changing the behavior of the filter circuit. If you have a speaker that uses ferrite core inductors the inductance will diminish as the core becomes more magnetically saturated with more current. As with audio output transformers the ferrite core magnetic elements have a magnetic inertia which means they don’t change polarity as fast as the signal. This leads to hysteresis distortion. This is why air core inductors are preferred even though they are more expensive.
So, if the EQ bump in a frequency occurs before the $10K amplifier the amplifier will control the further amplification of that EQ’d signal to lower the possibility of damage to the speaker voice coils?
Tone controls were never meant to compensate for poor electronics or speakers. If one has band limited electronics or speakers one can boost the bass or treble all one wants it’s not going to add to limited frequency response. Tone controls were meant to compensate for poor recordings and the Fletcher- Munson curves. Poor recordings and the Fletcher- Munson curves are still with us and will continue to remain so. Thus the need for tone controls is as necessary today as it was then. Of course one can limit oneself to a handful of excellent recordings but one cannot get rid of the ear’s dropping response at the frequency extremes at low volume i.e the Fletcher-Munson curves. Isn’t it interesting that purists either play their music very loud so as to flatten the Fletcher-Munson curves or else limit themselves to smaller number of excellent recordings. As for the superiority of current electronics and speakers, much of it is because of better parts and extended frequency response. The electronics of the past were frequency limited comparatively but they got the mid-range right and that is where most of the music lies. All one has to do is to listen to a 300B tube amp. Nothing equals it’s sound and that is because the 300B does the mid-range like nothing else. The bottom line is that if one’s taste in music is wide ranging then one will run into a lot of poor recording and this makes tone controls absolutely necessary. And if one is limited to a much smaller number of very high class recordings even then one cannot get around the Fletcher-Munson curves. Either way tone controls are absolutely necessary. As for the purists, considering the number of capacitors, resisters, length of wire and whatnot, tone controls do not deteriorate the sound. It is more in one’s mind than a reality. And in any case tone controls can always be switched out of the circuit. Regards.
I want to correct a common misunderstanding. Hearing loss is not caused by age. It’s caused by hearing damage. Obviously, older people usually have more damage due to more exposure, but it has nothing to do with age or sex.
Hearing loss also begins with holes in the upper midrange around 3k-4k. It is not necessarily a loss of high frequencies. Interestingly, people having hearing loss are more sensitive to distortion because they no longer can mask some frequencies.
I’m sure glad to hear that sex does not cause hearing loss 🙂
That’s very interesting…would like to read more about this theory.
I’m sorry Bob but I disagree.
It is a well known fact that in general women can hear higher frequencies better than men.
As your ears age the hair cells in your cochlear (stereocilia & microvilli) die off, making the reception of the higher frequencies more difficult.
So, yes, ageing of your ears is a major factor in areas of hearing loss.
I suspect that hearing loss is slightly different for everyone.
For me it is not in the 3kHz -4 kHz range that you have quoted, but rather the higher, 8kHz & above, frequency range.
Listening to loud noises extensively over your lifetime may cause hearing loss & other hearing related issues such as tinnitus.
This was considered true in the 1950s but has been revised to what I described in recent times. It is obviously different for everybody since everybody has been exposed to different sounds.
Bob,
You typed that, “Hearing loss is not caused by age” & that is a sweeping statement that is just wrong.
This completely erroneous statement has to bring into question the rest of your claims.
I first heard about this from somebody at Bell Labs and checked it with an Audiologist who was surprised that I was aware of it.
You are certainly welcome to believe whatever you wish.
Bob,
No disrespect sir.
Best to you & yours for 2021.
Not hearing loss ‘if you don’t stop that right now you’ll go blind’ 🙂
I very rarely think a recording played needs extra EQ, maybe because I’m selective on the recordings I play. If a recording doesn’t meet my standard then its out of the collection probably ultimately destined for thrift store, EBay etc. Though that said I still have a stack still here never to be played again by me.
Do I want to be a purist or do I want to enjoy those poorly recorded albums that I love and make them sound good – to me and my changing ears….?
I too have just ordered a DBX PA2 to replace my sub crossover & add that nasty EQ – OHHHHHH the impurity….!
I’ve also started the design phase of my Tinnitus Tamer 2000 – Ringing Frequency Feedback Presbycusis Processor.
Do you want pure or something you know will please you?
I AM talkin’ AUDIO here…….. aren’t I?
Do you think one day our TV sets will be accurate enough to lose all those pain-in-the-ass menus full of color controls? Or is it just a matter of taste? Or are they both a matter of taste? Or do they both depend on their particular environment, as well as taste?
My favorite tone control was the Yamaha variable loudness on my AX-900u integrated preamp/amp. Worked magic by adjusting tone and lowering volume at just the right levels simultaneously with the turn of a knob. Also had bass, treble and midrange controls with a bypass. I do miss that one!
I do have hearing loss in the 4K range of 30db in my left ear which does sometimes throw off the balance – so glad most preamps include balance control.
DSP & EQ can be useful tools compensating, correcting and adapting a PA system to sport and entertainment venues, but you can never recover something that does not exist in a recording. Tone controls and tone control bypass circuits compromise ultimate resolution, transparency and phase accuracy.
Along with Paul, here’s a brief listing from memory of modern high-end audio electronic manufacturers who understand this.
Audionet
Audio Research
Boulder
Bryston
CH Precision
Constellation
D’Agostino
Goldmund
Hegel
Soulution
Spectral
VAC
VTL
Btw, i agree that Accuphase qualify as a high-end audio manufacturer, but Emotiva, really?
Great list dr.goodears. How do you feel about adding Ayre, Dartzeel and Vitus? I’m sure there’s more.
Absolutely, as written the list was off the top of my head -> Aesthetix, Gryphon, FM Acoustics, Moon, Nagra, Naim, PS Audio, Rowland…
As far as consumer EQ is concerned once again, “you can never recover something that does not exist in a recording.”
So far, i prefer to keep the signal path as transparent as possible and passively balance our home audio listening environment via a wide assortment of designer friendly acoustical materials, though remain all ears to future DSP solutions that may sound natural and organic.
Professional grade room treatment products lead to domestic disapproval unless designed, disguised and integrated into the transparent fabric of the walls and ceilings.
I use speaker toe-in as my general overall set it and forget it “tone control”.
Cardas Quadlink RCA interconnect and Audioquest Red River XLR interconnect are my additional “tone controls”
Yeah. I too want tone controls. Sorry. Hell I want a “Loudness” switch for night time low volume background listening.
It has been said here already but let’s face it all recordings are not created equal. I’d also rather turn a few knobs then spend hours and more money on room correction (beyond what I already have done).
This is why I love my McIntosh C53! I have dialed in a loudness eq, and flip it on when I want to enjoy a Scotch and listen at low volume.
If you can have dedicated room’s and systems and only purchase and listen to audiophile recordings then sure, skip tone controls.
I find it harder to buy and find systems that perform at low volume levels that preserve my hearing.
A very important aspect to this not discussed so far is the concept that linear in-room response just doesn’t sound very good. “Flat” in-room response can sound thin in the bass and too bright in the treble. We don’t listen in anechoic chambers or with speakers buried in a field.
Thus, “target room curves”, as studied and documented at length by Harman, B&K and others sound most natural to most listeners. These curves typically slope up +6db from about 200down to 20hz, and decrease about 4db from 1khz to 20khz. That’s a 10 db downward tilt in total!
Although most dsp room correction systems provide for target room curves, well designed tone controls as found in McIntosh and others can go a long way to achieving a natural response. The idea that “we don’t need tone controls because our equipment is so good” ignores the room the equipment is in. The speakers and room are essentially one component.
“Accurate” vs “Musical”? I’d argue that you can come close to having both or at least an acceptable tradeoff.
A very helpful first step is to run REW and learn about your room, then treat, use tone controls or dsp to achieve an appropriate target curve, then sit back and enjoy!
Buy a good digital EQ with a microphone and spectrum analyzer so at least you can see where your problems in your room are and you can switch if off at anytime or a preamplifier with a tone control defeat switch, better yet a preamplifier with no tone or balance controls. The balance control is even worse than tone controls.