Another HiFi thread – Amps without tone controls…

Nom nom nom

although, to be fair they tend not to remove one crank arm and the back wheel on high end bikes and claim it’s for your own benefit.

Gears?

Hmmn.

You can have bypassable tone controls that don’t degrade anything.

the bypass is a switch…

there is not enough demand at the higher end for them, they are a blunt instrument anyway, better to use digital eq., or even better to treat your room…

the bypass is a switch…

No one, not one person with the most golden ears on the planet, not even Ken Kesslers fussier twin brother would be able to tell.

there is not enough demand at the higher end for them, they are a blunt instrument anyway, better to use digital eq., or even better to treat your room…

I’ve no experience of digital equalisation, so can’t comment – does it cost less than a pair of pots?
And not everyone has a dedicated listening room, sadly.

Nom nom nom

a 405 – why when there are better Quad amps?

I have 3 707s in the chest under the TV and use some early 909 mono-blocks.

The Chinese have got hold of Quad now and in the 909 have substituted poorer capacitors from one of their sister companies, leading to increased distortion.

Mid 90’s HiFi you say

Pretty sure I bought by Audiolab 8000S in ’97

90’s Mid HiFi ?

It’s basically just a different mentality to hi fi.

Tone controls add to the processing of the signal and can impart distortion, rather than the processing and tone control itself being unwanted.

Nowadays it is preferable to do tone control type duties in the digital domain to avoid the distortion.

Phase distortion is inherent, and not just possible, within the process of adjusting the tone of an audio signal with analogue components – it’s the same in the digital domain unless you use linear phase filter (FIR), however, this can lead to pre-ringing in the signal, which is also undesirable…

Once I upgraded my old Pioneer amp, I never worried about tone controls, because I auditioned various speakers until I found a pair that sounded good with the rest of what I had. Best way of doing it, because the speakers, and where they’re positioned, will have a far more profound effect on how a hifi sounds. Too much bass; move the speakers away from the walls, too little; move them closer, taking advantage of boundary effects. Too bright, well, you should have bought a pair with a warmer sound that suits what you listen to. My Rotel pre-amp has only the source selectors and a volume control, which is split, in order to balance the power-amps, a pair of Crimson 820’s, in my case.

Problem is there’s loads of really badly recorded and mastered stuff out there.
And a better system highlights poor recordings.

Do you write these off and never listen to them again?

I don’t normally find the need to use my tone controls, but if I want to listen to the sludgy sound of the first ‘Band’ album on vinyl, a smidge more treble means I can actually tell what’s going on.

A lot of very early cd pressings are horribly bright.

Sadly, I can’t just shift the speakers.

The Chinese have got hold of Quad now and in the 909 have substituted poorer capacitors from one of their sister companies, leading to increased distortion.

Nooooo. Say it isn’t so!

(Have always lusted after a full Quad system – just have some first gen 21L speakers.)

Nooooo. Say it isn’t so!

read this and weep…

read this and weep

Crikey. Still, makes secnd hand then upgrading a good option – nice comment from the designed in there!

read this and weep…

Lordy!

Surely once you’ve got to that level of geekness you’ve gone waaaaaaay past the point of just enjoying the music you are playing!

🙂

Surely once you’ve got to that level of geekness you’ve gone waaaaaaay past the point of just enjoying the music you are playing!

why, because you buy a reasonably expensive amplifier and do not expect it to have been downgraded to emit unacceptable levels of distortion?

That blog is run by people whose business is modding and servicing old Quad solid state amps, so doing those measurements is not that geeky for them!

Here’s a comment from there from the designer of the amplifier:

Hi Stefaan
I just came across your site; an interesting read although I won’t have time to go through your archives. Your results on testing the Quad 909 are quite shocking. When I designed this product I introduced new components throughout with great care and the sound and measured performance were greatly superior to the earlier but almost identical 606. To most listeners it was a different amplifier. Many of the components as specified had to be imported from Europe; inconvenient but necessary.
It seems that the factory no longer bothers and fits generic components. With factories everywhere, not just China, the designer has to keep monitoring the production because the factory will substitute components for convenience; to save money or even to fit a “better” part with the best of intentions.
I adopted the same philosophy as with Rotel; Cambridge Audio and many other companies I designed for where there is no one component or circuit feature that is vital but the overall combination works very well. Change one thing and the balance is lost.
With best wishes to you
Stan Curtis

My mono amps without tone controls or volume controls

Says the guitar geek 🙂

Bloody cheeky if you ask me…..

A balanced system sound good and does not need tone adjustments,
there are exceptions but “bad” recordings are generally made worse by any tweaking, recordings that need lots of tweaking on some setups i have found to sound much better with no tweaking on balanced setups. that is to say- IMO unbalanced equipment make bad recordings sound worse. you can’t really improve them with EQ.

Nearly all digital EQ hurts my ears but i quite like the harmonic distortion and subtle phase shifts introduced by some analog EQ designs. But i speak from the perspective of a recording engineer, i never felt the need to EQ stuff for playback on well matched HIFI setups.

oh yeah and different types of capacitors,switches, pots and all the circuitry in the signal path do make a difference….you just may not notice it. 😆

I had one of these for years. Loved it. It just sounded right.

None taken, Rusty 🙂
Speaking as a guitar geek, tone controls on a guitar amp are generally used to remove frequencies from the signal, not add them – so with the tone on full, you get the unadulterated signal. If you turn the treble up, you’re actually removing bass. In order to actually boost those signals, you’re going to have to have more active amplification for each set of frequencies, which is only going to add noise and complexity.
At least that’s how it is in spandex-rock land 🙂

Waswas
This is what we should all aspire to;

🙂 my brothers is still going strong!

Not sure how relevant this all is btw – with a guitar, your creating something, not reproducing.
Unless you’re trying to copy someone elses tone, in which case you shouldn’t be allowed a guitar in the first place. 🙂

The little amp (Fender Champ 600) doesn’t have tone controls at all.

The bigger one (Vox modeller) does, but I only ever leave them on full and change tone via the guitar.

The little one sounds better, btw. 😀

I had one of these for years. Loved it. It just sounded right.

Oooh I had one of them too. Nice little amps

There’s a 66SE in Wilkinsons in Burnley.

They want £299.00 for it 😯

HTRB!

Right, brace yourselves – doesn’t happen often on here*, but, it might, after taking everything into consideration, weighing up the facts and looking at the whole picture, appear that I have been just a teensy-weensy, ickle midgy bit completely and utterly 100% wrong.

I’ve traded in a pair of speakers and my old amp for one of these:

Marantz PM66SE KI.

And it sounds amazing, even with very badly recorded stuff.
No, it doesn’t have tone controls.
It doesn’t appear to need them.

So, I’m sorry.

*If anyone is feeling traumatised by this apology, please go and have a quick look at one of the religion or politics threads.
You’ll soon forget it ever happened.

And it sounds amazing, even with very badly recorded stuff.
No, it doesn’t have tone controls.
It doesn’t appear to need them.

So, I’m sorry.

*If anyone is feeling traumatised by this apology, please go and have a quick look at one of the religion or politics threads.
You’ll soon forget it ever happened.

😆
Oh no we won’t, we’ll bring it up at every possible opportunity and rub your nose in it!
Seriously, though, you’ve discovered what is meant by good amp design; most of the flaws in vinyl and cd recordings are often emphasised by poor design, and a good amp will soften the effects, making them much more easily lived with.
You’re absolutely right about early cd’s being harsh; they really were. They were frequently mastered from second or third-generation stereo safety masters that were EQ’d for vinyl, and pretty crappy, and many amps were made for less than demanding users with cheap turntables with poor performance, an unhappy set of circumstances. And also were largely Japanese, who had a native music that tended to be much higher pitched; listen to samisen playing, virtually no bass and little midrange, so sounded very ‘thin’ to European ears.
Technics amps, and particularly their early CD players, were horrible, very harsh, whereas Denon and Rotel were much smoother, because they were designed specifically for Europe. I still have my original Denon CD player, which sounded wonderful compared to the Technics ones in the shop; sold loads of the Rotel and Denon ones off the back of the Technics ones… 😀
Nice amp, that, I hope you get many, many hours of enjoyment rediscovering all your music.

I think only one of my amps (an Arcam) has tone controls and they’ve never been used as there is a direct option to bypass them.

Never felt the need for tone controls on any of the amps I’ve owned.

Pretty sure I bought by Audiolab 8000S in ’97

Great amp – nearly bought one back in the day, with B&W CDM1’s and the Audiolab CD player. Was seduced by Naim in the end though.

Right.

I’ve had the Marantz on for a while now and I can say it’s definitely a keeper.

I’ve had a few amps, NAD 3130, QUAD II’s, Creek, Kenwood, but this is a bit special.
Wouldn’t normally have bought such an old bit of kit, but the dealers offered me a very good warranty.

Swapped my old floorstanders for a little pair of Mission 700’s I had knocking around and it’s just such a natural sound.
Fell asleep to Bruckner on the headphones last night and about to hit the vinyl again.

Wish I still had my old Royds or BBC monitors – I think they’d suit it well.

most of the flaws in vinyl and cd recordings are often emphasised by poor design, and a good amp will soften the effects, making them much more easily lived with.

A good amp won’t do anything but amplify the source signal – a bad amp might emphasize the problems but a good amp certainly won’t soften them.

I still have my original Denon CD player

which one? a couple of mates had one of the popular Denons and they sounded OK though their mid-fi amps, but in reality it sounded horribly metallic and hard.

My Rotel RA-10 amp has tone controls (bass/ treble) but they can be switched in or out of circuit with a push button on the front panel, so you can choose to have flexibility with sound or 100% purity – nice 🙂

Which one? Damn, now I’ve had to go upstairs and look at the front! 😉
Right, I’ve got a Logic DM-101/Zeta/AudioTechnica MC front end, into a Rotel RC-870 Pre/Crimson 820 power combo, Denon DCD-1500 CD player, Aiwa AD-F770 cassette deck and Trio LS-770 Class-A speakers, on Foundation stands.
The turntable control board is on the fritz, so sometime I ought to get it sorted out. All fairly old skool, really. 😀

I think that was a higher end Denon – those cheaper ones were pretty nasty sounding – I think one of them still has his, but it plays through a NAD 3020 which makes most things sound OK – because it is not a good amp…