[Frihed91]

Two suggestions:

1.  Try changing your orientation so that the speakers can be 1M from each wall (both sides and back) and 2Mm apart and then listen from a position 2-3 M away.

2.  Buy some new hemp Audio Note AN-E speakers and stick them in the corners.

[slinco]

I think tone controls are vital - I wouldn't be without them. Mostly to make brightly mastered CD's listenable, but also for room issues. I use a NAD C162 pre amp, along with a Monarchy tube DAC and an AES tube power amp, feeding Von Schweikert VR4jr speakers. I've found musical nirvana with this system, and the tone controls get used daily. They are very subtle and work nicely, not at all like the overzealous tone controls of the old days. I hear no difference in transparency (or imaging or anything else) with them switched in or out. Nice pre amp.

[TheChairGuy]

Perhaps I've not been fed a good diet of preamps with tone controls, but for the several I've had and owned, it was palpable and real how they denigrated the sound.

Loss of transparency - maybe    But, it always sounded like a measure of distortion added...of pureness robbed.

I have a vintage Mitsubishi DA-C20 my daily pre now.....it has defeatable tone controls.  They always work best with them out of the path.

If I stay away from metal dome tweeters and mp3 (easy to do, both), I largely avoid any over-brightness issue in my system.

John

[soundbitten1]

Change your cables .

[Paul_Bui]

I would first look into the AC line cleanliness (or lack thereof).  My own experience: even after investing in better transport, DAC, amp, tube pre, even better speakers and room treatment, I did not quite get rid of the glaring treble.  Most recently, taking care of cleaning up the AC in the audio room and entire house has brought the music back.

[pgastone]

Thx for all the help!!
Yes, I agree that tone controls would be better out of the loop but only if there isn't another more pressing problem- in my case the treble hardness.
But you gave the good idea to try a preamp with defeatable tone control and that way I can hear what kind of sound distortion is produced when they are active.
I did try and swap cables even though I really do not want to use cables as tone controls- in any event, the anti-cables are hardly bright unlike a couple of silver cables I tried- that said I didn't manage to attenuate the treble much- I might give it another go but the real problem is the room and no cable can really change that.

I will give the AC issue a look-a good filter/conditioner might do something- I had looked at this in past but never got ar4ound to it- maybe an Adept Response?

As for potential preamps I will look at the Mitsubishi and Nad a look- I thin k that before I drop some serious money on say a Mac 220 or something I will go the cheaper/vintage route and experiment.
There's a Mac 220 on the 'gon which is awfully tempting but I think rushing into this is prob a bad idea.

Any other preamp suggestions let me know since I think I am going give this a go pretty soon.

[walkern]

I recently added an Alan Maher Design Reference Power Center to clean up the AC.  My system used to generally lean in the direction of being bright or a little ruthless (most obviously with marginal recordings).  The RPC is an absolute God send.  My system is much more forgiving now, with no loss of detail or bass control or extension.  Imaging improved as well, and the music now emerges from a dead quiet background to boot.  I can't vouch personally for any of Alan's other products, but if you read some of the threads here most users seem very pleased with whatever they've gotten from him.

[Paul_Bui]

I recently added an Alan Maher Design Reference Power Center to clean up the AC.  My system used to generally lean in the direction of being bright or a little ruthless (most obviously with marginal recordings).  The RPC is an absolute God send.  My system is much more forgiving now, with no loss of detail or bass control or extension.  Imaging improved as well, and the music now emerges from a dead quiet background to boot.  I can't vouch personally for any of Alan's other products, but if you read some of the threads here most users seem very pleased with whatever they've gotten from him.

Yep, always start from the wall AC.  That is, the juice you feed your components.  You possess impressive components deserving better AC to perform their best.  Also, components come and go, but the AC line is here to stay with your audio, video, and all other appliances in the house.  Talk to Alan Maher.

[*Scotty*]

    pgastone,Before you put a lot of money into a tone control solution you could try buying a inexpensive receiver from Radio Shack, the  Sherwood RX-4105 AM/FM Stereo A/V Receiver  for $99.00 comes to mind. I think you can return it within 30days, if the Shack doesn't have this policy Walmart and Kmart do have it. This would tell you if tone controls will solve your room acoustic problems.
Scotty                                                                                                          

[zmanbands]

Alan Maher's fairly inexpensive reference power cords add some warmth and are a mind boggeling fantastic upgrade to the cord that comes with the equipment. Monsterous bang for the buck.

[slinco]

Cables schmables. Last time I looked they weren't adjustable. I suppose if you want to choose your music to fit your system having a non-adjustable system would be OK, but me, I want to listen to EVERYTHING and I want it ALL to sound great. Having frequency balance that's adjustable on-the-fly is essential to me. As far as distortions being added, my own experience is that a well designed modern tone control like the NAD's are completely invisible sonically, at least to my ears. I could never tell the difference in a blind test. Vintage gear is a different story, I have heard a slight (and sometimes not so slight) veiling with some. I'd stick with the modern stuff.
As far as power conditioning goes, it depends on where you live. My house is fairly rural, and power conditioning makes no difference at all. Money much better spent on music. I'm sure if you live in downtown Manhattan you'd surely need something though.

Anyway, that's all just my opinion, and everybody's ears vary. I'm very sensitive to "bright", and so many recordings are mastered that way it'd be a darn shame to have to sit there and listen to them uncomfortably, when with the twist of a knob you could listen with a big smile on your face. Then when you happen to hit on a perfectly mastered recording you can hit the "defeat" button and smile for that one too. It's really not such a big deal guys, and it's kind of astonishing to me that tone controls are so reviled in the audiophile world. They make lot's of recordings sound better - shouldn't that be a GOOD thing?

Getting back to the equipment recommendations, there are also some nice integrated's out there with tone controls. The beautiful Luxman stuff comes to mind. The L-550A-II is a real honey. 20 watts class A. Would be a nice partner for your Zu speakers. It's currently at the top of my "I want that" list.   http://www.onahighernote.com/luxman/?c=8&id=31

Also forgot to mention that I've read numerous times that the NAD C162 has a killer phono section. Here's a link to the Absolute Sound review http://www.avguide.com/products/product-2929/

[soundbitten1]

If tone controls were a good idea more manufacturers would have them on their products .

[slinco]

If tone controls were a good idea more manufacturers would have them on their products .

Fashion. Trends. The high end audio world is full of it. Kind of like the Automotive world.

It's like saying "if 50 MPG were a good idea more manufactures would have vehicles that would achieve it". It's fashion.

Sorry to take this off topic pgastone, but this discussion brings up an interesting question. How do all you guys without tone controls deal with brightly mastered recordings? My music collection has a lot of them, and your's probably does too. Makes no difference if it CD or vinyl, all formats suffer from this phenomenon. How do you all deal with it?

[pgastone]

Well, I thought I'd keep you all updated.
I went to th basement where I have a Mac Mx117 (peamp/tuner) with tone control and plugged it into the system.....result?

Terrible. Disgusting. Horrendous...

Muddy and fuzzy- definition, soundstage all gone.
Yes- could attenuate the treble but everything became so flat that I didn't eveen need to.

Ok, back to the drawing board- I am going to try something modern and se if that helps- I am seriously looking at the NAD which if i can find used should be pretty cheap.
I also saw a rotel, current preamp which has an eq funtction which id defeatable.
lastly I was looking at a Nakamichi frfom the 80's which I have always heard amazing feedback on- one has come up on ebay and if it goes cheap enough I could give that a go.

[soundbitten1]

this discussion brings up an interesting question. How do all you guys without tone controls deal with brightly mastered recordings? My music collection has a lot of them, and your's probably does too. Makes no difference if it CD or vinyl, all formats suffer from this phenomenon. How do you all deal with it?

In my present system I never had a problem with extreme brightness . Maybe because my speakers came with foam around the tweeters ? Maybe it's my aging ears ?

My secondary system's speakers that I use in an exercise room was on the bright side at first but since I've tamed it through room treatments and bi-amping with separate volume controls .

[vett93]

I also recommend Alan Maher Designs' products. I have one PE V S/AC and four PEs from them. A very interesting part of their products is that you can adjust brightness/warmness by the locations of their filters on the power line. As someone who has had formal education/training in EE, I still have no idea how this is possible. But it simply works!

[Lancelot]

Having used a NAD C 162 , I would consider it to be a very high value purchase. I compared it directly to a Bryston BP25 ( with Bryston 3B SST amp) that I owned and found them very similar ( obviously build quality and reliability strongly favors the Bryston ) .

The tone controls on the NAD were suitably subtle and only very slightly affected transparency. Modern tone controls seem to be far less intrusive than on older units-your experience with the Mac doesn't surprise me.

I think most audiophiles ( unless you specifically want an old school tube sound) would be very surprised  at how good the NAD pre is.

[el-cee]

VAS Audio, U.S. Importers of Cayin, have a full-function preamp, including phono.
The piece is called the VAS Citation Sound-1 preamp and it has the full complement of tone controls.
I saw and heard this piece in the VAS room at the Vacuum Tube Valley Show in Jersey last year and it
was impressive. VAS is located in Hazlet, NJ - 732-888-3288. I think it lists for under $3k.

http://www.cayinusa.com/Product_Name.asp?Category=25:30:17

[ltr317]

If tone controls were a good idea more manufacturers would have them on their products .

Fashion. Trends. The high end audio world is full of it. Kind of like the Automotive world.

It's like saying "if 50 MPG were a good idea more manufactures would have vehicles that would achieve it". It's fashion.

Sorry to take this off topic pgastone, but this discussion brings up an interesting question. How do all you guys without tone controls deal with brightly mastered recordings? My music collection has a lot of them, and your's probably does too. Makes no difference if it CD or vinyl, all formats suffer from this phenomenon. How do you all deal with it?

I absolutely agree with you.  Having been involved off and on with supposedly "high end" audio for over 20 years, I see fashion trends many times in audio.  Manufacturers have to repackage their products every so often to make them seem like "the latest and greatest" or they lose sales.  With poorly recorded (read bright or compressed) cds, I play them on my Yamaha receiver (with tone controls) connected to my HT system.  Mid-fi amps for all their faults, at least homogenize the sound so that the good and bad sounding LPs or CDs sound closer in sound quality, allowing the bad sounding ones to be more listenable.

[Double Ugly]

Sorry to take this off topic pgastone, but this discussion brings up an interesting question. How do all you guys without tone controls deal with brightly mastered recordings? My music collection has a lot of them, and your's probably does too. Makes no difference if it CD or vinyl, all formats suffer from this phenomenon. How do you all deal with it?

Great point and question.

I have some amazing pieces I can only listen to for brief periods, so I know precisely whereof you speak.  The only recourse I have now is to limit their play time, though a small investment in some sort of tone control would certainly be a more suitable solution.

My ultimate goal is to eventually have them remastered by an mixing/mastering guru I know who's done amazing things with what I had considered lost causes.  I realize my situation is relatively unique, but I have every intention of taking full advantage of it.