should bass and treble tone controls be used to alter the sound of hi fi equipment?

Question

all hi fi equipment is designed to have a flat frequency response so as to keep the signal as pure as possible.amplifiers and other electronic equipment can manage a very flat response(eg :10 to 50 k. hz +-0.005db) loudspeakers are harder to keep flat being an electro-mechanical device .an accurate speaker might achive say :40 to20k.hz +-2db therefore should the sound which is fairly flat to start with be altered with tone controls which will change the sound from the original flat response ?

Answer 1

you are correct and wrong!

You should not touch them if you feel the music source at the input of the hi-fi system is perfectly taylored for flatness and your speakers at the output end are also taylored perfectly.

In general, some records which are recorded from old tapes will have faded high freqencies. So here you can adjust such that the bass is not dominating the treble. and you can restore the treble by boosting it.

Another case is when a voice is recorded with poor quality microphone say its low frequency response is not good. So, now you can boost the low frequencies while listeing to it.
In this way you can compensate gains and losses of audio in frequency domain using equalizer.

Probably you can make the music more exciting to the listener by slightly boosting or atteniating some frequencies using equalizer.

Equalizer meant to equalize the unequalities of the signal source in frequency domain.
Not only for tayloring to the sepeaker system at output.

It doesnt mean that you should not touch it again, once set. Its setting may be different for different sources.

Its not fixed even if the speaker system is fixed.

You can try different settings until you find the best output.

Just remember your default setting which most common to produce best output among all sources. Restore it before you try a new setting so that you can feel the difference.

Answer 2

Good question!

My opinion is the equalizer available in most equipments should only be used to counter a non flat response of one of the equipments.

The speakers can have a non flat response and also the room can give a non flat response (absorb some frequencies more than others).

Then the problem is to know or measure which frequencies to boost or tone down.
Personnaly I don't know enough and don't have the right measuring equipment.
So I always use a flat equalization.

I find it funny how many people modify the equalization of their Hifi equipment without understanding a thing. Some even just draw a pretty wave on the equalizer just so it looks good ...

The only filter I sometimes use is the loudness one which makes a pleasing sound when listening to music at low volume level.

Answer 3

I agree that if you have a good sound system with speakers that have a reasonably flat frequency response, and you want to hear the music exactly as it was recorded in the studio, you shouldn't have to adjust the tone controls. Some record producers overdue the bass or treble, so the controls are useful for adjusting the sound to your taste rather than the producer's taste.
And then there are my kids, who like to crank up the bass, mid and treble to max.... why?

Answer 4

i have no idea what the hell you are talking about. i use the bass and treble to suit my personal listening pleasure. some times listening to a weak or static filled am station the noise can be reduced adjusting these controls.