guitarforlife
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Post by guitarforlife on Apr 11, 2016 14:47:49 GMT -5
I keep reading about this dirac isn't this kind of a room correction program and if so doesn't just set a EQ to do it.
If that is the case then why are tone controls looked down on in 2 channel audio?
I have always had tone controls and tweaked then a little bit to my likening.
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Post by garbulky on Apr 11, 2016 14:56:01 GMT -5
Well Dirac isn't exactly a tone control.....it's a bit more complicated. I'm not a fan of tone controls because I haven't found any that sound good to me. But if it sounds good to you that's all that matters.
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Post by sonicseeker on Apr 11, 2016 15:05:47 GMT -5
Well Dirac isn't exactly a tone control.....it's a bit more complicated. I'm not a fan of tone controls because I haven't found any that sound good to me. But if it sounds good to you that's all that matters. Right you are. With the right two channel rig you are hearing as close to the original as possible which should be as good as it can sound. The simpler the better for low distortion and high resolution and detail. |
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Post by Gary Cook on Apr 11, 2016 15:48:10 GMT -5
DIRAC is attempting to correct the variances in sound reproduction that the room, amplifiers and speakers etc cause. It's trying to get what we hear to sound the same as it was recorded. Also this processing is done whilst the signal is in the digital domain, so it avoids adding unwanted analogue effects, distortion, noise etc. Which are some of the reasons why analogue tone controls are frowned upon, they can introduce distortion into the signal and almost always add noise.
Cheers
Gary
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guitarforlife
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Post by guitarforlife on Apr 11, 2016 16:05:11 GMT -5
Well Dirac isn't exactly a tone control.....it's a bit more complicated. I'm not a fan of tone controls because I haven't found any that sound good to me. But if it sounds good to you that's all that matters. Right you are. With the right two channel rig you are hearing as close to the original as possible which should be as good as it can sound. The simpler the better for low distortion and high resolution and detail. Yes, But I wonder if my hearing is damaged so sometimes I need to boost the highs a bit. Does that make sense? |
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Post by geebo on Apr 11, 2016 16:23:44 GMT -5
No harm in using the tone controls. If it sounds better with them, then by all means use them.
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Post by sonicseeker on Apr 11, 2016 16:46:50 GMT -5
Right you are. With the right two channel rig you are hearing as close to the original as possible which should be as good as it can sound. The simpler the better for low distortion and high resolution and detail. Yes, But I wonder if my hearing is damaged so sometimes I need to boost the highs a bit. Does that make sense? Yes. You can do that in DIRAC though. |
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bootman
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Post by bootman on Apr 11, 2016 17:43:45 GMT -5
Are you really asking why current Emotiva products have no classic tone controls?
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Post by MusicHead on Apr 11, 2016 18:40:19 GMT -5
Well, better use tone controls then trying to adjust how your system sound playing with esoteric speaker cables... :-)
On a more serious note, the main drawback I see in the typical bass and treble tone controls is that center frequency and Q are fixed.
More often than not you are going to affect frequencies other than those you want to adjust.
All room correction systems, on the other hand, are based on parametric equalization. Center frequency and Q are adjustable, thus allowing a much finer intervention.
On the other hand PEQ is much more difficult to perform correctly without proper tools. Classic tone controls can still be better than nothing in many cases.
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guitarforlife
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Post by guitarforlife on Apr 11, 2016 19:07:14 GMT -5
Are you really asking why current Emotiva products have no classic tone controls? No, It was a general question. I look at quite a few preamps and very few have tone controls. Back in the 70's all receivers had them. My Marantz that I use at the moment has them as well, it also has a direct button that bypasses them all together. I switch back and forth and still prefer the setting I have adjusted with the tone controls. So I was just wondering why more do not have them. |
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Post by knucklehead on Apr 11, 2016 19:13:27 GMT -5
I've tweaked the tone controls on my Parasound preamp. I dialed in a bit more on the highs and it sounds great. I've reset it to the center position and still like a touch more treble. Since the damned knobs are there I'm going to play with them. Why not? I paid for them. Personally I like having tone controls.
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bootman
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Post by bootman on Apr 11, 2016 19:26:39 GMT -5
Are you really asking why current Emotiva products have no classic tone controls? No, It was a general question. I look at quite a few preamps and very few have tone controls. Back in the 70's all receivers had them. My Marantz that I use at the moment has them as well, it also has a direct button that bypasses them all together. I switch back and forth and still prefer the setting I have adjusted with the tone controls. So I was just wondering why more do not have them. Could be that customers just started to demand more than the basic non linear response tone controls on their gear since then. |
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Post by Gary Cook on Apr 11, 2016 20:57:28 GMT -5
No, It was a general question. I look at quite a few preamps and very few have tone controls. Back in the 70's all receivers had them. My Marantz that I use at the moment has them as well, it also has a direct button that bypasses them all together. I switch back and forth and still prefer the setting I have adjusted with the tone controls. So I was just wondering why more do not have them. Could be that customers just started to demand more than the basic non linear response tone controls on their gear since then. I also believe that the ongoing quest for superior sound quality has lead to the elimination of componentry likely to cause distortion, noise and cross talk. Tone controls were a noticeable source of that. I recall the specs (but not the name or model) of a pre amp that was available with and without tone controls were noticeably different. Cheers Gary |
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Apr 12, 2016 9:18:51 GMT -5
I think Gary's answer is probably the closest - but there are actually several reasons - with varying degrees of "making sense".
1) The original definition of "high fidelity" is "a straight wire with gain". Therefore, since they always alter the sound, tone controls are totally superfluous. (Or, to put it less kindly, a crummy system might need tone controls to fix the way it sounds, but, if a system sounds right to begin with, then they can only cause it to sound wrong.) Note that we're NOT talking about adding noise or distortion here; simply that tone controls are used to correct problems that a good system shouldn't have to begin with. (So, for example, if your speakers don't make enough bass, then turning up the Bass is not the ideal solution; the solution is to get better speakers.) {OPINION}
2) Tone controls add extra circuitry. So, since more complex circuitry is bound to add more noise and distortion, and you really shouldn't need them anyway, you should avoid them. There's a sort of corollary to this that says that, if it's difficult and expensive to design a simple line stage that doesn't cause audible noise or distortion, it's going to be a lot harder, and even more expensive, to design one with tone controls that's equally good/uncolored. (The latter became accepted dogma once the idea that high quality audio components were difficult to design and required expensive parts became widely accepted. In the early days nobody worried much about adding a few fifty cent parts.) {FACT}
3) The factual claim that tone controls are rarely flat when you set them to flat. Most tone controls use potentiometers, and potentiometers simply don't track perfectly (very expensive ones can track pretty well, but even they aren't perfect). Back when most equipment had balance controls, you could correct for a slight mis-tracking of the volume control by using the balance control. However, there was no way to correct for the fact that, if you turned the treble up 3 dB in the right channel, it might be +3.1 dB in the left channel, which would throw off the perceived channel balance. Things progressed from trying to match the pots at the mid-point (the "0 setting"), to offering a click-stop at 0, to offering a push-button or switch that would disable the tone controls when you weren't using them. And, finally, from there to "if I'm going to push the tone-flat button anyway, then we might as well just leave them off". {FACT}
4) One should also note that, as "lots of control" became popular with some folks, and things like graphic equalizers became common, many of those were amazingly complex, contained a massive amount of circuitry, and really did degrade the sound rather badly. (And this was even more true for cheap models whose designers, shall we say, prioritized more knobs and lights way too far above sound quality.) At that point, it became a sort of philosophical battle between the purists who wanted low noise and distortion, and the control freaks, who wanted more bands of eq, and were quite willing to ignore the significant levels of noise and distortion that such devices often generated.
5) Finally, it should be noted that tone controls do in fact tend to be misused. (You can make small corrections to room or speaker response with a tone control. However, if the lack is due to a limitation in the device itself, then trying to "force" a speaker to make a lot more bass or treble by turning up the appropriate tone control will often simply cause it to distort.... reinforcing point 1) ).
Note that all of these are predicated on the basic idea that tone controls serve no valuable or necessary purpose.
I should also make the observation that, as regards 1), audiophiles have developed some strange ideas. For example, some audiophiles will buy expensive equipment which lacks tone controls, then buy even more expensive cables with the idea that cables can act as tone controls. (Notice how many conversations end with claims that a certain cable or component makes the sound "brighter" or "duller" - which is what tone controls are supposed to do.) This is presumably because "no respectable audiophile would own a preamp with tone controls", but it's perfectly OK to pay a lot of money for a wire that, if it does anything at all, is simply acting as a - not very effective - tone control, or to buy a component that inherently colors the sound in much the same way as a tone control would. (However, that way you don't have the embarrassment of having all your audiophile friends see that you have the treble turned up to +2.)
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Post by audiobill on Apr 12, 2016 10:12:36 GMT -5
So, Keith, how do you reconcile tone controls with Dirac, etc.
Isn't Dirac altering frequency response, thereby causing "distortion of that "straight wire with gain?" you mention?
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Apr 12, 2016 11:47:46 GMT -5
That's actually very simple..... The whole premise of not needing tone controls is based on the idea that "a perfect system" wouldn't need them. However, since speakers and rooms are NOT ever perfect, and are rarely even close to that lofty goal, that premise simply isn't true. Dirac is doing some pretty heavy-duty processing, so of course it's going to cause some damage to the signal, or at least some unintentional alteration. So, yes, if you had perfect speakers and a perfect room you would be absolutely foolish to use something like Dirac. In fact, if they were perfect, then you'd be foolish to mess with them at all. However, because none of us has perfect speakers, or a perfect room, it then becomes a matter of whether the good outweighs the harm... and, in the case of Dirac, when used with most speakers, in most rooms, the positive results it produces far outweigh any minor negatives. (As other people have already mentioned, because they make sweeping changes, which rarely actually "line up" with the errors they're trying to correct, the opposite is usually true of simple tone controls. Simple tone controls very often make broad and unintended changes, while still failing to correct specific problems, which makes them not very effective at their intended purpose. Assuming that you find flaws that really need to be corrected, then it makes the most sense to choose the tool that combines doing the best job of fixing what needs fixing, and minimizing the side effects - and, at least for now, Dirac seems to be the best tool for the job.) So, Keith, how do you reconcile tone controls with Dirac, etc. Isn't Dirac altering frequency response, thereby causing "distortion of that "straight wire with gain?" you mention? |
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Post by yves on Apr 12, 2016 12:04:25 GMT -5
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Apr 12, 2016 13:55:06 GMT -5
Luckily, now we have parametric equalizers (although it's nice to have something like Dirac do it all for us automatically).  |
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Post by yves on Apr 12, 2016 14:02:48 GMT -5
Luckily, now we have parametric equalizers (although it's nice to have something like Dirac do it all for us automatically). Amen.  |
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Post by Cogito on Apr 12, 2016 14:09:08 GMT -5
Luckily, now we have parametric equalizers (although it's nice to have something like Dirac do it all for us automatically). It would be nice if Emotiva came up with a dedicated Dirac processor box that could be connected to a stereo/AV premap. Price it at $399.95 and I'll be your first customer... |
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