I do keep my stereo knobs flat, because I want to hear how the artist mixed it, but on my amp it is all about want I want.
The goal of a good high fidelity system is to do that, of course, but what I've learned since mixing for the last 23 years in my studio, in other studios, and in mastering rooms, and of course being an audio nutcase since the 70s, is that this particular goal is not really achieved, even in very expensive hi fi systems. I'll explain why:
No two speaker models sound truly alike. You know this if you've ever listened to speakers to pick out a pair for your hi fi. They all sound different. And of course, they all can't be right.
In fact, none of them are right.
Just look at how the best speaker systems are made - multiple drivers, crossovers, boxes that have to be stuffed with wool and ported and lots of other things just so they don't vibrate and resonate too badly...and very high end speakers are often boxes on top of boxes. These "fixes" are designed to account for the shortcomings of putting speakers in boxes or on baffles and trying to get a full, flat frequency response. It's why every speaker system model out there sounds different.
A speaker system, even a very good one, is a kludge of engineering fixes and choices and philosophies to overcome the limitations of present-day drivers. So we have woofers, and tweeters, and horns, and midrange drivers, and heil drivers, and ribbon technology, etc., etc., etc. And lots of box designs.
So none of them are telling the truth. They're all trying, and failing. Sure, they can sound really good. But the artist wanted you to just maybe hear the power of a live band. Or the mighty sound of a live orchestra.
You're not fooled - no speaker can really do that! I don't care how loud you crank it, the band in the room would sound different.
And speakers like the old Bose 901s, or the Magneplanars or electrostatic panels simply add the problems of the room into the mix more than direct radiators like boxed speakers do. This is why studios don't use them for work.
So far, there is no fix. Just more speakers, bigger speakers, etc. But the problems remain the same as they were in the 1950s when someone got the idea to put a pair of theater speakers with huge HF horns into a living room to see how that sounded.
But you can tell from even the next room, with the very best hi fi speakers in the world, that it's not a real band or orchestra playing in there. Transducers like speakers are the weak link in the audio chain, and I'll submit, they're even a weaker link than microphones, which are another weak link, but at least multiple mics can be combined to overcome some of the weaknesses of the recording and reproduction chain. So we see ten mics on a drum kit and other weirdness, but your wife won't allow ten speaker boxes in your living room just to reproduce drums, so that's out.
The final weak link, of course, is the room. It's the weakest link of all.
No two rooms, even ones that have been acoustically treated, or designed by architects with expertise in studio design, sound exactly alike. And the room has a very significant impact on what the artist, the engineer, the mixer, and the mastering engineer hear. Your listening room also has a huge impact on what you hear on playback.
Most major label (and smaller ones, too) records are recorded by one engineer, mixed by a second one, and mastered by a third. Generally that involves three different speaker system types, different machines and converters in the case of digital, different sounding consoles, and so on. It even involves rooms acoustically designed for different purposes.
In most cases, the artist and the recording engineer sit down together and come up with a scratch mix that serves as a guide for the mix engineer. This is usually closest to the Artist's vision - in that particular studio. The mixer adds another vision, and makes the tune a bit more commercial sounding in the process.
Maybe the artist was listening on soffit mounted monitors in a million dollar room where the speakers are tri-amped and cost $50,000 the pair. Or maybe the artist was listening on a pair of Yamaha bookshelf speakers, the NS-10s, that were designed for home hi fi in the 70s or 80s. Whatever. There are going to be differences between what the artist hears and what you hear.
The mastering engineer has the job of making that mix sound more polished, and to make sure that it translates well to a variety of environments, from homes, to cars, to computer speakers to earbuds and god knows what else.
The only way you're going to hear exactly the how master that the artist finally approves truly is intended to sound is to go to the mastering engineer's room and listen.
Your room, on the other hand, has anomalies, unless it has some very seriously measured acoustical treatment. It may bounce a bit too much bass around, causing bass cancellation and various nodes where the bass is too high in level. It may absorb or reflect too much high frequency.
If speakers and rooms sound different from one another - and they ALL do - then you're not hearing what someone else was hearing during mixdown, during mastering, etc. You can't be. Even in the near field, you hear plenty of boundary reflections, etc.
The tone controls aren't really designed for a listener who loves bass to crank up the bass. They're designed to compensate for room differences. And they can be good at that, or not. But that's the intention of most equipment designers. Sometimes the most useful control is the balance control, because some rooms don't allow for symmetrical placement of speakers relative to room boundaries. And so on. On more sophisticated systems, there are times that the smartest thing to do is use a shelving filter to simply cut the frequencies below, say, 50 Hz. Often that cuts the mud, and allows the bass to seem more focused and better balanced.
In any case, you're not hearing exactly what the artist wanted. You're coming close, maybe. But I don't care if you have two $10,000 monoblock amps and a pair of Wilson Watt speakers, it's an approximation.
Hence, tone controls; if you really understand your room and its acoustics, and you have a preamp with good tone controls, they can really rescue the sound and make it truly hi-fi. To be more accurate, I should simply say, they can make it higher fi. Because there is no high fidelity yet.
I'll repeat: high fidelity is a dream that is not yet a reality. What we have is moderately good fidelity.
If you've ever been in a well designed studio that has a THX approved multichannel system, it's breathtaking compared to what we listen to on commercial recordings, but it's still not real sounding. An improvement, yes. I've been in experimental 10 channel rooms with more than two subs. It can be very nice. Still ain't the real deal. But better.
Still...try and live with 10 large speaker systems in the typical room. It's so not happening.
Tone controls can also compensate for poorly mixed/mastered stuff. Early digital mixes often suffer from screechy and brittle high end, not because the artist had that vision, but because until ten years ago or so, mixers were pretty much still in the habit of goosing the highs to reduce the high frequency losses that often occurred with tape to tape transfers. So they're useful for taming bad recordings, too.
It's really the same reason that there are tone controls on a guitar amp. To compensate for different guitars, different rooms, different speaker cabinets and speakers, etc. In the case of a guitar amp, however, the goal isn't reproduction, it's production. So tone-shaping becomes a major task, and sometimes we as players lose sight of the other important aspect of making the amp sound good in the room it's being played in.
"Well," you say, "I want to come as close to the Artist's vision as I can within these limitations, so I won't use tone controls."
My reply is simply that given the fact that you have different speakers, and different equipment, and a different room, you're already using tone controls - the tone controls are in your head from when you selected speakers that pleased your ears, same with your electronic equipment, and of course when you set your stereo system up in your room.
You can only guess at what the artist heard, an educated guess at best.
So if you hear a problem when you're listening (and admittedly, some folks are blissfully unaware of such problems), then it makes sense to solve that problem with judicious use of your tone controls, or to at least try.
And what about those albums that for whatever reason, are simply unlistenable but the music is really good? I'm a huge fan of Tom Petty, but every album after Wildflowers has sounded crappy to me. Generally they've been compressed to absolute death, they have no dynamic range, and the high and low frequencies sound unnatural. But I want to hear the songs!
So yes, I reserve unto myself the right to use the tone controls to at least make those records listenable!! I don't even ask Tom's permission. I just do it.
Anyway, use those preamp controls! There's nothing to fear -- you can always put them right back in the middle if you get freaked out!
