Paul's Posts — 18 September 2011
By Paul McGowan
So, whatever happened to tone controls? You know, the bass and treble boost/cut controls that used to adorn just about every 1950 and 1960′s era preamplifier?
They fell out of fashion in the 1970′s because purists didn’t want them. The analog audio path must be absolutely pure.
They fell back into fashion in the 90′s when Mark Levinson’s Cello introduced the Audio Pallette (designed by Dick Burwen), a multi-thousand dollar tone control with separate power supply. It was deemed high-end and desirable, but too expensive for most of us.
20 years later, they’ve reappeared in almost every home theater processor and receiver on the market – but not in two-channel.
What’s interesting here is two things: the apparent 20 year on again, off again cycle and that the cycle hasn’t yet repeated itself in two-channel.
With the vast majority of high-end audio now digital, the old concerns of mucking up the analog signal with an EQ circuit are gone; while the value of tone controls, making up for poor recordings and deficiencies in the room and loudspeaker chain, never went away.
Now that we can add them without any worry of compromise to the audio chain, it has me wondering when they will become the rage once again.
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fig
I don’t need tone controls myself, but it has taken a lot of time getting my system to that point. I’ve heard plenty of systems that could use tone controls, so adding this without sonic compromise would seem like a good thing to do, as long as manufacturers deem it beneficial. I do however, need balance controls and won’t do without this feature on any preamp I use here myself.
BryRohr
I couldn’t listen without a balance control either and seldom use my tone controls but have to say that some poor recordings that are great musical performances sound better with a little “tonal doctoring”
Paul McGowan
I am with you. Actually, I think it was wrong of us not to add balance control on our products and this will be corrected in later releases.
Audionerd
In a room with acoustical treatments, well-recorded music played on a high quality stereo system can very well do without tone controls. Tone controls are for folks who didn’t get it right (or didn’t bother to). That said, Mr McGowan implicitely suggests that manipulating the musical signal in the digital domain -as opposed to the traditional analoge tone controle circuit- doesn’t do any harm to the resulting sound. Ik cannot belief and understand this. Can anyone explain this to me?!
Paul McGowan
Yes, you misunderstood my meaning (don’t worry, happens all the time). What was meant to be said is that with digital, we don’t change anything in the signal path either better or worse. With analog, even inserting a balance control in the signal path hurts the sound. Digital has the advantage of having no downside to adding the ABILITY to change the sound, the balance, the tone, the timing etc. without affecting the signal path at all.
Once you do start to tweak and change the tone controls, then all bets are off unless you really know what you’re doing.
Dick Burwen
I designed the tone control circuits in Mark Levinson’s Cello Audio Pallete shown in your picture. My original circuit used IC op amps. Mark got those changed to discrete component op amps to make his product bullet-proof. That is made it very expensive, but much appreciated, and manufactured for many years.
Now I have designed a greatly improved tone control system in digital form. It is downloadable software that plugs into the Windows Media player on your computer. My new system has 6 tone controls with better frequency response curves, finer steps of only 0.1 dB, covers more than 70 dB boost or attenuation at 15 Hz and 20 kHz, and adds extreme high frequency reverberation. In addition it can produce from 1 to 7 channels output from ordinary stereo music tracks by adding ambiance into all the channels via my patented high frequency reverbertaion. It includes mixing and balance controls. 64-bit and 32-bit floating point calculations prevent the addition of any noise or distortion. It has a high speed file converter that can make processed music files for home, car, and cell phones. This software, called Burwen Bobcat Tone Baancer, is very affordable.
Unlike other artificial reverberation or real room reverberation that rolls off typically at frequencies above
2000 Hz, Burwen Bobcat’s greatest effect is above 10,000 Hz. The surprising and most important result from the addition and subtraction of many sound reflections is thousands of peaks and valleys in the frequency response that make your music clearer, cleaner, more musical, and easier to listen to. In addition an immediate overshoot in the reverberation decay curve clarifies percussive sounds, somewhat akin to sharpening edges in a photograph.
This system is suitable for both purists and audio enthusiasts who seek the the greatest thrill from their music collection. Visit burwenbobcat.com and burwenaudio.com.
Paul McGowan
Thanks Dick and thanks for posting. You are somewhat of a legend around here and we appreciate your joining in. Let us know if we can help you spread the word.
BryRohr
Having personally experienced the Cello Audio Palette I commend you Dick on what I feel is the best ever cure for crappy recordings!
Thank you for bringing me closer to the music without adding tone control nasties!
You deserve a pat on the back Dick and a sincere Well Done my friend!
I just wish I could afford one in my own home. Can your downloadable software be used as a plug in with Media Monkey?
Bryan Rohr
Asheville, NC.
machinehead
I would say with digital room correction coming into vogue in high end audio, that is the ultimate in tone control.
That being said it is at least for the time being back in a big way.
At last years RMAF it seemed to be the “new” toy for some manufacturers.
Ballisticman
My environment, my sound. Personally I can do whatever it takes to make my experience more pleasing to me. And, if it involves manipulating two tone control knobbies or an array of sliders, so be it, the only person who is required to make the decision is me.
On my newer stuff there is a dearth of adjustments more or less adequately explained as Paul states by the fashionistas of listening as unnecessary or tainting the experience suitable only for those who live in trailer parks….
Hot Flash: Traileristas have the money also and we vote with our dollars.
By the way, does anyone know where I can get a darn good $29.00 Reverb for my car? All I can find lately it seems is a $1,000 DSP Sound Processor…….
Bazza13
After installing a digital room correction unit to my system to compensate for a cathedral ceiling I discovered that it offered me different algorithms for tone control which I use seldomly but do give me a chance to tone down overly bright recording. Very useful and without any degradation to the quality of the original source.
Mike48
The photo is of the Cello Palette Preamp a much less expensive product than Cello’s Audio Palette. I owned one of the former for years — it was a godsend with poor recordings, such as much early digital.
I agree with others that acoustic treatment of the room is most important. However, if you are a music lover with wide-ranging tastes, there is no substitute for tone controls. Old jazz recordings often have thumping bass; some old orchestral recordings have steely treble; and even some modern recordings are poorly equalized (and except for audiophile labels, they are ALL equalized, often to sound good on a car radio). If, e.g., you want to hear Scarlatti played on the harpsichord, it really helps if you can bring the frequencies over 3k or so down a few dB on some recordings.
I replaced the Cello with a heavily modified Tact digital preamp. Though it has room correction, my room is good enough that its effects are minimal. It also has digital tone controls, which are transparent, available from the remote control, and can make listening to far more enjoyable.
Count my votes as YEA for (1) an acoustically treated room, (2) a balance control, (3) a polarity-reverse (phase) switch, and (4) tone controls.
Frank LaFond
I wholeheartedly agree with Mike48 except that I’ve not been as fortunate as him to have treated my room effectively enough that my TacT (and now software-based) room correction is not a substantial improvement to my ears. Of course having so much control also opens Pandora’s Box…
bfotk
The great benefit of traditional bass and treble controls is that they provide the ability to correct issues emanating from recording and mastering facilities. Producers and engineers (and musicians) aren’t always right.
BryRohr
AMEN BROTHER!!!
chopansky2
If digital technology was not so execrable in reproducing massed instruments or voices, save for those efforts in the hands of talented and gifted sound engineers, tone controls would not be needed
Paul McGowan
Except this ignores the deficiencies of the speakers or the room. I agree that tone controls for individual pieces of music is something I would not use – ever – but I sure might use a sonically neutral control that could fix room or loudspeaker problems.
Mike48
Paul,
“Would not use — ever” is a surprisingly strong statement. Do you not own any badly recorded great performances whose poor equalization could be improved — by you? Or is your objection something else?
Mike
Paul McGowan
It is perhaps too strong a statement, and I should modify it to say if I could I would, but I can’t think of anything I own that I could fix in this way. I have some recordings I don’t enjoy listening to because they’re too harsh sounding – but I wouldn’t know how to fix harsh – turn down the higher frequencies or turn up the bass? I would imagine that a gross adjustment like that might help – I am just not sure it would be something I would do.
But you’re right, that’s too strong a statement.
Dick Burwen
I play every recording with different system settings – but I have a rehearsal first. My Audio Splendor software I developed makes 5 channels from stereo tracks by adding high frequency reverberation into all the channels. All the system settings, tone controls, high frequncy reverberation selection, direct signal mix, and reverb mix are saved in and recallable from libraries. When I click a track in the Windows Media Player, a Subtitle for which I named the settings recalls my entire system setup. So every track or album is automatically played with its own settings.
A typical older track is played with 16 dB difference between 15 Hz and 5 Khz, and it can be as much as 40 dB. Individual track tuning makes a huge difference in the pleasure I get from listening.
Mark Malboeuf
Dick’s statement is at least as radical as Paul’s!
BryRohr
WOW!
Tone controls sure do stir up a lot of controversy around here.
Personally, I have always enjoyed the use of tone controls to help compensate for the many things that can change the tonal balance of recorded music outside my listening room. The recording industry is not a perfect science and even something as basic as monitors in a mastering lab can throw things out of whack for all of us to have to deal with in the end.
Remember, its all about the music, do what sounds right for you.
Did you guys know that at one point in time the most avid hunter and user of the Cello Audio Palette was mastering facilities!
Happy listening!
fb
I think tone control should not be confused with room correction. One corrects the room (same correction at all time), the other will be recording dependent.
I was dreaming for years of owning an Audio Palette in the early 90s, I now been using one very regularly for the last 10 years.
If your system is sufficiently transparent enough, you’ll find that remastering of old records are usually done better that the original, but i do sometimes find always the same “character” in some re-issues, and i don’t want it, so i correct it out which makes the whole listening experience so much better.
Some XRCD, Mofi, etc need correction in my humble opinion. XRCD tends to be a bit too warm, and Mofi to dry.
Only the Cello Audio Palette would allow you to correctwithout destroying the underlying signal.
PS: you are a legend welcome here!