I’ve also been told many times that true Audiophiles don’t use Tone Controls at all and prefer the Music flat without any EQ.

I like that I have the luxury of playing with the Tone Controls on my Yamaha Amp and for times I don’t want to use them I use the pure direct mode that bypasses the tone controls.

Now here’s my dilemma. I’m looking to buy my second amp and I just can’t think of anything else except Yamaha. Or even when I do find something that has a good spec sheet I cancel it out as soon as I release they don’t have tone controls.

Is this Blasphemy in the Audiophile world? Am I chasing the wrong thing’s looking for that perfect sound setup?

Any kind response will be appreciated. Thank you in advance.

  • drummer414@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Mastering legend Bernie Grundman recently stated in an interview that a component that measures perfectly but has more components in the signal path sounds worse than a component with less in the signal path, even if it doesn’t measure as well.

    That’s why the audiophile (unobtainable) holy grail is a straight wire with gain. Meaning just one wire that did all the processing necessary for an audio signal with nothing extra in theory would sound best.

    When I was a kid a bought a 10 MXR channel eq I used on 20 foot RCA’s and loved playing around rebalancing tracks from my couch, but analog eq introduces among other things phase shifts. That’s the beauty of using eq in a music server like Jriver, which doesn’t suffer the same issues. That’s where I’d leave eq in a modern audiophile system. If needed for vinyl playback, use a preamp with a tape loop so the eq is only in the signal path when desired.

    Regarding phase shifts, some will be unable to hear the degradation because they don’t have phase accurate speakers. It’s one of the reasons I run with Andrew Jones designed concentric speakers. When you hear a phase coherent speaker and play a recording that preserves that phrase info, it’s a real revelation to hear.