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BREAKING NEWS:.....the audiophile community was rocked today as Scott F, "exits stage left", and claims to have tone control knobs and is proud to use them.Rock on Brother.
I'm at a lost for words. McIntosh?
JLM,Honestly, I just lost interest in high end audio. I reached what I considered the 'pinnacle' of resolution and involvement with my old system. My work schedule has become very demanding plus we've gotten back into classic cars and hot rods after a 25 year respite. The car enthusiast crowd out there simply dwarfs the audiophile community. Every time we take one of the vehicles out, we end up making new friends. It's a love that both my wife and I share where on the flip side of that coin, she could care less about audio. You'll admit, audio is a largely singular hobby. Sure you get together with audio friends and listen but it is probably infrequent. And your wife may like music but (many) only listen passively. They aren't in awe of the sweet spot and all the nuances of high end audio. They just like to hear tunes and most could care less how its reproduced.I've started leaning (heavily) towards that latter statement. My caveat is that I want a system that still holds much of the audiophile qualities but I'm far less interested in that last 10% so many audiophiles are searching for. I want something that sounds really good and maybe [moreso] looks cool. Sort of a shallow statement but I think we'll all admit that looks play a big part in audio. I can forgive a lot of warts if a piece is drop dead sexy...and the this McIntosh B&W system is a stunner (IMO). To seal my fate and have my audiophile card revoked, the Mac pre has tone controls....and I WANT them. I'm tired of the stupidity of no tone controls on high end gear. If I have to make the excuse that the system sounds like sh*t because its a crappy recording, I'll toss the towel in completely and go buy Bose. I want the ability to level out the sound on a crappy recording by twisting a bass or treble control. Sure, it may not be perfect but remember, I don't care anymore. The lack of tone controls [alone] excludes a very large segment of the music I listen to, regularly. I spend about half my time listening to Country music, a genre soundly rejected by 'audiophiles' along with techno/electronic/chill/trance and the occasional (and select) pop/hip hop. I listen to everything, not just audiophile music. If I have to listen to another audiophile piece of music, I may slit my wrists. Anymore, I could care less about depth of stage, placement across the soundstage, extension or any of the other audiophile obsessions. I get more pleasure listening to country music over the (nearly) 50 year old, full range speaker in our '66 Thunderbird than I do a high end stereo. Now that I've outed myself as a reformed-audiophile, I have to say I still enjoy some of the audiophile trappings...and want to retain them on some level, hence this system. I'm just not going to let those obsessions get in the way of my musical enjoyment because they really are nothing more than a distraction in my enjoyment of music.I guess that was a long way of saying, I don't care about the audiophile trappings anymore but I still want something cool looking that sounds decent.
In the 69 T Bird all i hear is wind noise and the motor. I don't use the AM mono radio setup at all. The burble of a big block is all I need out there!
Tone-Loc?
