Integrated amps with no tone controls

[Buddy Shagmore]

I am a long time 2 channel lover. My setup is a Marantz 2245, Yamaha CD S2100 (silver), and Chorus II's. I have been window shopping for a new integrated amp, just in case, heaven forbid, my old ('71) receiver gives up and dies. I notice it is rare to find an integrated with tone control knobs. What's up with this? Isn't this a step backwards? My first step into quality hi-fi was a '71 Sansui 2000A, it was very nice, but it only had bass and treble knobs. I checked out the Marantz, and of course it had a mid knob too. So I sold the Sansui (wish now I'd kept it), and bought the 2245. I see the new Marantz PM8006 has 3 way eq, but it doesn't come in SILVER. And silver is a must! The Yamaha A S2200 comes in silver, but only has bass and treble...no midrange knob. Otherwise, the Yamaha is a very handsome piece, and of high quality... the Marantz appears less so.   (I notice other parts of the world (Europe, Asia) have the Marantz in silver...thanks a lot Marantz!). I like to keep things simple, I don't want an outboard eq unit. Please educate me on why having no tone adjustments, or only bass and treble, is a step up in audio enjoyment? Isn't fine tuning a recording according to your room and tastes part of the fun?

[willland]

8 hours ago, Buddy Shagmore said:

And silver is a must! The Yamaha A S2200 comes in silver, but only has bass and treble...no midrange knob. Otherwise, the Yamaha is a very handsome piece, and of high quality.

I feel that the Yamaha's tone controls are some of the best implemented I have ever used.  From my experience with my very well balanced A-S1000, a midrange tone control is not needed at all in my room. 

 

Bill 

[garyrc]

9 hours ago, Buddy Shagmore said:

I am a long time 2 channel lover. My setup is a Marantz 2245, Yamaha CD S2100 (silver), and Chorus II's. I have been window shopping for a new integrated amp, just in case, heaven forbid, my old ('71) receiver gives up and dies. I notice it is rare to find an integrated with tone control knobs. What's up with this? Isn't this a step backwards? My first step into quality hi-fi was a '71 Sansui 2000A, it was very nice, but it only had bass and treble knobs. I checked out the Marantz, and of course it had a mid knob too. So I sold the Sansui (wish now I'd kept it), and bought the 2245. I see the new Marantz PM8006 has 3 way eq, but it doesn't come in SILVER. And silver is a must! The Yamaha A S2200 comes in silver, but only has bass and treble...no midrange knob. Otherwise, the Yamaha is a very handsome piece, and of high quality... the Marantz appears less so.   (I notice other parts of the world (Europe, Asia) have the Marantz in silver...thanks a lot Marantz!). I like to keep things simple, I don't want an outboard eq unit. Please educate me on why having no tone adjustments, or only bass and treble, is a step up in audio enjoyment? Isn't fine tuning a recording according to your room and tastes part of the fun?

 

Welcome to the forum!

 

"What's up with this?"

 

Eliminating bass and treble controls is most definitely a step backwards, IMO.  It was based on a misconception, namely that if the listener imposes no EQ on a recording, the music will sound both more natural and more like the mixers in the booth heard it, thereby preserving their artistic intentions.  Also eliminating tone controls would eliminate some phase problems that can be generated by using tone controls.  

 

Well, tone controls with a neutral or flat position (straight up) that takes the tone control out of the circuit provides a true choice: no tone controls with no problem, or EQ if that sounds better to you than flat with a particular recording.

 

As to sounding more like the mixers in the booth herd it, your speakers are different than theirs, your room is different than theirs, your electronics are different than theirs, your player is different than their playback equipment, your SPL is different than theirs, your ears are different than theirs, and I'll bet your preferences are different than theirs.

 

Also, there are demonic pressures within record companies, on the part of the "suits," to tailor frequency response to what they think will sell best, as part of "the loudness wars."  This often takes the form of cutting the bass, and often pushing up the midrange, sometimes causing harshness.  See Chris A's many posts on fixing these recordings by "demastering," starting with The Missing Octave.

 

You probably won't find an amp with a midrange tone control, but you probably won't need one because careful adjustment of bass and treble will probably suffice.   Back when midrange controls were sometimes called "presence controls," Paul Klipsch, with his usual humor, suggested an "absence control."

 

A marvelous integrated amp, the Luxman L580, is the best solid state amp I've ever had, and while it doesn't have a midrange control, it has bass and treble, with three different slopes each, plus a "low boost" 3 position switch, and many other choices.  If you could get a used and tested one of these ... and rosewood, with a silver front ...

 

 

[Islander]

Wow!  Based on the appearance of the faceplate and its controls, that’s a mighty fine amplifier.  It’s a pity you can’t find something like that on the market today.  As I recall, the thinking in the Seventies about having little or no tone controls was based on two beliefs.  First, there was the idea mentioned above:  that with no ability to tweak the sound, you’d be hearing what the artist (or at least the mastering engineer) had in mind.  

 

Most of the rest of this message is aimed at the readers who were not going to concerts and listening to music with their friends in 1965 to maybe 1985.  Except for paragraph 4.  Sorry about the poor editing.  So.  Stereo shops were popping up everywhere, and styles were rapidly changing from the old folks’ big consoles (wide 1-piece “entertainment centres” with receiver, turntable (usually of the changer variety, so you could put on a stack of LPs), and “stereo”speakers, located 4-5 feet apart, depending on the width of the console.  It was a piece of furniture, with no electronics in sight, until you lifted the lid and reached down to turn it on and tune in a radio station or pop on an LP or 45.

 

What was the new style?  The “component system”, with separate integrated amp and tuner, or receiver (maybe a Pioneer SX Series unit), and a turntable, often a Dual model from Germany, and a pair of speakers, usually bookshelf type, that you could (wow!) place anywhere in the room.  This was a big deal at the time.  Portable music was a suitcase record player.  You opened the lid, and there was the turntable, often of a type that would damage an LP a little bit every time it was played, until we thought that noisy records were just a fact of life.  You had to carry that heavy little square suitcase, plus an equally heavy stack of LPs (Long Playing vinyl records, usually 22-25 minutes per side, unlike the 78s which were only good for about 3 minutes)

 

As well, there was a second thought:  the idea that any tone controls would necessarily muddy up the sound, thus getting away from the “straight wire with gain” concept of the ideal amplifier.  Was this the case with the tone controls of the time?  I don’t know.  It might have been true.  In either case, it was thought that a component could not be “real hi-fi” if it had tone controls.

 

The modern (21st century, at least) Yamaha  receivers (and maybe the amplifiers, too) have a tone control, but beside it is a button marked Bypass, which gives the impression that when the button is pressed, the tone controls are taken out of the signal path, so they can do no damage to the signal, which could otherwise be possible, even when they were set to Flat.  They used to have Bass, Treble, and Mid tone controls, as well as a Loudness knob, rather than the Loudness button, which was popular in the late 20th century.  These were meant to compensate for the ear’s loss of sensitivity to bass and high treble sounds at low volume.  The Loudness button boosted the bass a fair bit, and the treble somewhat less.  To get away from a “one-size” Loudness compensation, the idea at Yamaha was that at your normal listening level, you’d set the Loudness knob to Flat, and then to reduce the volume, you would instead turn the Loudness knob to the left, just like a Volume knob, but the numbers were increasing, representing more compensation being applied.

 

That seemed like a good idea, but with Yamaha, as well as most other brands, many people didn’t read the manual, and thought that the Loudness controls just added bass, which had to be a good thing.  More bass = more good, went the thinking in many homes.  With the speakers of the time, at least the low-end to mid-range ones owned by my friends and myself, this really muddied up the sound.  Subwoofers were not yet widely available, so true deep bass was something you could hear at concerts, but never at home.  We went to a lot of concerts, which had great prices, as well as great sound.

 

So those were the Bad Old Days.  Things got much better after that, and modern 21st century sound systems are amazing.  Okay, I don’t have a low-end system anymore, so I am not talking apples to oranges, more like raisins to mangoes.  Nice juicy mangoes. 

 

Okay, this post is way too long.  The End.

 

 

[garyrc]

8 hours ago, Islander said:

As well, there was a second thought:  the idea that any tone controls would necessarily muddy up the sound, thus getting away from the “straight wire with gain” concept of the ideal amplifier.  Was this the case with the tone controls of the time?  I don’t know.  It might have been true.  In either case, it was thought that a component could not be “real hi-fi” if it had tone controls.

 

With many bookshelf speakers (especially inexpensive or midpriced ones) turning up bass controls, "would necessarily muddy up the sound," partly by straining the speakers (especially if the volume was high), partly by mid-priced amplifiers beginning to clip when loudly feeding acoustic suspension speakers that were 20 times less sensitive than my JBLs at the time (of course, in bassy passages, a bass boost of 6 dB would increase the power needed by 4 times, and, to begin with, to replicate the 107 dB at the main listening position the JBLs would produce with 16 watts in my big room, would take 250 watts into a "normal" speaker, and about 700 watts into, say, a B & W 801 F ), and, finally, partly because of extra woofer excursion caused by turning up the bass control, increasing frequency modulation distortion.  If the bass control reached up into the midrange, the distortion would be increased there, as well.

 

So, bass controls used with inadequate speakers did tend to muddy things up.  With my big, horn loaded, JBLs, they did not.  With my friend's medium sized EVs, with horn loaded ports, they posed no problem.  With my Klipschorns, no hint of muddiness, with the Luxman 150 Hz turnover bass turned up, in addition to the Luxman Low Boost 70 Hz "on."  At the time, Gary Gillum told me, "You won't need "Low Boost."   Well I sure didn't need it, but I enjoyed using it, especially with Fanfare for the Common Man, which shook the whole house.  But I did hear low frequency muddyness on turning up the bass with my friends' EMI, KLH, ADC, Infinity, AR, Wharfedale, etc., etc.

 

During the '60s and '70s, most of my friends, adjusting by ear, ended up with a typical tone control setting of about "Bass +2," which would be anywhere between a 6 dB boost on the average, and an average boost of 8 dB (McIntosh C28), depending on the preamp.  We were surprised at the consistency of this finding.

 

 

[Islander]

It sounds like you and your friends had reasonably accurate hearing.  With no subs, and the typical 50-80 Hz. beginning of bass rolloff of typical/affordable speakers of the time (I measured my Audio Logic AL-750s as beginning to roll off at 70 Hz.), adding +2 on the bass probably resulted in the sweet spot between “nearly enough bass” (relative to today) and “not too much distortion”.

 

Sure, better speakers and amps were available, but when living in a rented apartment and driving an old car, “state of the affordable art” produced slightly (Slightly?  Hah!) compromised sound.  Keep in mind that in the Great White North, prices of most things were 30-50% higher than Stateside, so budgets were somewhat tighter of necessity.  Prices are still much higher here, so buying better audio gear means no more champagne, and the relief chauffeur had to go.  It’s rough.

[artto]

On 6/15/2020 at 7:16 PM, Buddy Shagmore said:

I am a long time 2 channel lover.

Please educate me on why having no tone adjustments, or only bass and treble, is a step up in audio enjoyment? Isn't fine tuning a recording according to your room and tastes part of the fun?

 

Yes, it is.

 

For some reason "purists" tend believe tone controls add distortion and that their precious recordings (and other playback equipment) are perfect, or at least "the reference". Which of course of course is absolutely not true. Decades ago I was guilty of such stupidity.

 

And yes, it seems to be a "trend".

 

I recently took a look & demo for several weeks of the newest McIntosh integrated amps. Hard to believe, but only the lowest price ones had bass & treble control available via remote control. On all the other more expensive ones McIntosh expects me to get up out of my chair, walk 15 feet to the equipment racks, turn a knob or two, walk back, sit down, listen, if it's not right, repeat. What's with that crap on a $10k or $15K integrated amp? Even more astounding the MA5300 didn't even have any outputs! ZERO! And then I had to spend another $500 for a NAD product to get hi-res streaming into it!. Decided to just go with an NAD M32. Even though the amp is a true all digital thru-put amplifier you can still bypass the tone controls if it really bothers you. I can't hear any difference. But I do use the bass control frequently - for fine tuning a recording according to my room and tastes.

[OO1]

On 6/15/2020 at 8:16 PM, Buddy Shagmore said:

Please educate me on why having no tone adjustments, or only bass and treble, is a step up in audio enjoyment? Isn't fine tuning a recording according to your room and tastes part of the fun?

having a midrange tone control is a plus , you are 100% right , purely cost savings , now a good mixer will have quite a lot more tone controls ----and will dial in your room perfectly -that's  option no 2 --------

[OO1]

On 6/16/2020 at 6:02 AM, garyrc said:

 

 

 

A marvelous integrated amp, the Luxman L580, is the best solid state amp I've ever had, and while it doesn't have a midrange control, it has bass and treble, with three different slopes each, plus a "low boost" 3 position switch, and many other choices.  If you could get a used and tested one of these ... and rosewood, with a silver front ...

 

 

A quality piece of equipment ----------these were quite expensive back in the day , and if you translate the cost to todays $ , they are high end gear , made to last ------ the rosewood -is  what set Luxman apart , that extra touch of Class -

[artto]

4 minutes ago, RandyH000 said:

having a midrange tone control is a plus , you are 100% right , purely cost savings , now a good mixer will have quite a lot more tone controls ----and will dial in your room perfectly -that option no 2 --------

 

No it won't.

 

All it will do (to some extent) is dial it in for ONE particular location/listening position. That's it.

 

There's is no "electronic" substitute for a proper acoustically sized, proportioned & tuned room.

[OO1]

1 minute ago, artto said:

 

 

There's is no "electronic" substitute for a proper acoustically sized, proportioned & tuned room.

I agree -----on that  precise point - you are correct ----

[Chris A]

On 7/22/2020 at 5:24 PM, artto said:

On 6/15/2020 at 7:16 PM, Buddy Shagmore said:

Isn't fine tuning a recording according to your room and tastes part of the fun?

Yes, it is.

 

For some reason "purists" tend believe tone controls add distortion and that their precious recordings (and other playback equipment) are perfect, or at least "the reference". Which of course of course is absolutely not true. Decades ago I was guilty of such stupidity.

This seems to be some of the worst "audiophilia".  There are others that Peter Aczel wrote about 20 years ago (RIP), mainly anti-digital bias that survives among too many older audiophiles today.  But there are others that are just as wrong:

 

1) phonograph records are a higher fidelity format than digital discs (this is another form of anti-digital bias.  The issue isn't the format, but how little latitude there is making phonograph records that makes them much less able to be abused during mastering than digital formats.)

 

2) horn-loaded loudspeakers aren't hi-fi (self explanatory).

 

3) Electronics are more important than loudspeakers and room acoustics (this is a big one--so the message is to spend your money on electronics rather than better loudspeakers/room acoustics)

 

There are others, of course.  The notion that recordings are perfect is really big lie: 

 

On 7/22/2020 at 6:05 PM, artto said:

There's is no "electronic" substitute for a proper acoustically sized, proportioned & tuned room.

Too many audiophiles are willing to accept "head in a vise" listening rooms and loudspeakers (in particular), with one chair, etc.  This is real BS.  Hip deep BS. 

 

Think of commercial cinema: every seat has to be a good one.  That's why so many people now own loudspeakers originally designed for cinemas--because they must make every seat a good one. That's the way that home hi-fi should be--wall-to-wall good sound. 

 

PWK was a proponent of three-channel stereo in order to lock in the center image (as well as dramatically increasing speech recognition), even if you're off axis by as little as 6 inches, etc.  That's a deficiency of the stereo format.  Surround sound arrays (5.1, etc.)  address the deficiencies of stereo, especially locking in the center image even if sitting off-axis.  In my room, anywhere you care to stand (i.e., more than 4 feet from the loudspeakers) is a good place to listen if listening to multichannel recordings.

 

Chris

[Chas]

I too, am one who likes to be able to EQ recordings that may sound flat in their original recorded state. Bass and Treble controls are an essential part of amplifier selection. Additionally, to have a remote that has B&T adjustments is mandatory. Why is it that so many high end amps do not build products with these adjustments is something I don’t understand. I currently have a Rotel RA-1572 which has tone controls on both the amp itself and the remote. It also has a bypass option which allows for a 0/0 setting. My only complaint on the Rotel remote is that it isn’t backlit. Otherwise it provides the adjustments I like.