40,000 Tweaks For Free!

[IanG-UK]

Amongst all the chat about special boxes (eg Mutec), special signal cables (eg my own Shunyata), digital room correction (eg home audio fidelity); not to mention mains conditioners and mains cable and grounding boxes; how many of us have ever tried the amazingly versatile tone controls on the Devialet?

Just looking at "treble" and taking less than the almost infinite choices available, you can
- set to cut at "off", or 10kHz or 8kHz or 6kHz or 4kHz or 2kHz;
- set the filter slope to "off" or 24dB/octave or 18dB/octave or 12 dB/octave or 6dB/octave;
- set the tone control adjustment to "off" or +2% or +4% or +6% or +8% or +10% or -2% or -4% or -6% or -8% or -10%.

I think that is over 200 possibilities (and the same number on the bass; even ignoring SAM), so that amounts to 40,000 possibilities.

Given that music, through a digital code, only has three core components - intensity, frequency and time, albeit in innumerable combinations, why do we often look for the monetary solution when there are so many free solutions to explore first? And this doesn't even touch on using acoustic foam tiles which are readily and cheaply available at £70/sq m and where the effects can be profound (but perhaps domestically unacceptable).

Going back 30 years or so, tone controls provided by the likes of Quad (the basic ones on the 33 pre and the step and slope and tilt ones on the 44 pre and later) were criticised by the hifi mags during the Linn and Naim era, as being largely subtractive. But now, in the digital domain, they must be different - but rarely they get a mention.

[Confused]

I have to admit I always feel like I am "cheating" if I have the tone controls set to anything other than zero. This does beg a question though, do the tone controls influence the overall sound quality in the same way that DSP might? I can think of people who have been striving to make minor tonal tweaks and might claim that silver cables can make the sound brighter, this kind of thing. Obviously a +1dB tweak on the treble is going to be cheaper than buying a new set of cables, but is there a SQ penalty if the tone controls are anything other than zero?

I did have a chuckle at the line "why do we often look for the monetary solution when there are so many free solutions to explore first?" I have just spent £1000's on some new kit that has made my previously balanced system sound a touch bright. The good news is I can fix the issue for free!

[IanG-UK]

I know what you mean.

Most of the industry has persuaded many of us that tone controls must still be quality subtractive (even though they are now done in the digital domain) whereas extra boxes which we might buy "must" be potentially additive because they cost money - and sometimes lots of money.

I'm relaxed about manufacturers modifying their own kit (as with Devialet) because they are doing it in the context of a holistic system (even more so with Devialet's SAM and RAM) but I always have this suspicion about extra boxes (having bought Entreq myself!) unless the manufacturer test both objectively and subjectively (as is the case with Shunyata).

As you say, silver cables are invariably bright whereas my custom made lead cables are invariably dull!

[Hifi_swlon]

I loved the idea of the tone controls but just couldn’t bare the torturous Devialet implementation.
If I need to do it now I just PEQ or add to a convolution filter, but then it’s only available to Roon. I’ve long since moved on from bit perfect and much prefer to eq for the room and general preference. If Devialet had a real-time adjustable PEQ or even web gui adjustable tone settings I would probably use theirs. I had hoped we’d be hearing about the advanced GUIs for the CI by now but I guess that’s not coming....

[Pim]

The fact Devialet come with tone controls was one of the reasons I chose Devialet. I want to enjoy music, not listen to what the almost deaf artist (Type in 'singer almost deaf' in Google and you get a lot of hits) 'intended' me to hear. I must say I don't use them very often and since I swapped the 200 for the Od'A I use them even less, so you could say that the better the amp, the less need for tweaking.


I'm not into conspiracy theories but let's have a go for fun; There used to be tone controls on almost every amp and everyone was happy. At some stage some smart designer decides to remove them from his new amp design so there's less quality loss in the circuit. That makes sense. A shorter signal path surely stays more pure. So other designers follow (It's less work so why not?) and before you know it, there's hardly any amp left with tone controls. So what to do about those pesky recordings that sound thin, bright or boring? Cables! By changing your cables you can tweak the sound of your system. So the fact that amplifier designers have become too lazy to try and design better quality tone controls has helped the cable manufacturer's business. And now there's all these boxes @Confused is playing with. Are they making the music purer or are they just changing the tone? Who knows, but it's big business for sure.

I would love to have the time and money to buy a whole lot of that stuff and try it out but I'm just too busy and poor / tight to do so. So for now it's tone controls that will have to do the job, and with 40,000 settings it'll keep me quite busy.

As @IanG-UK says, acoustic foam has a big impact on the way the room sounds. As an example; I posted here a while ago that my new living room sounded fantastic with the Key LS50W in it before the plaster board went up. It was just all fibre glass insulation all around. Now the plaster board is in but the room still empty, there's a 2.15 second echo in the room when I open the window latch. I tested it the other day because I was surprised by that echo. I knew it was bad but then I opened that latch and the sound just hung around I just had to time it. I tried three times and they all came out around the 2.15 second mark. Just think about that; a sound comes from your speaker and will mix with the next 2.15 seconds of music coming from that same speaker, which then mixes with the next 2.15 seconds...you get the idea. It's a mess that no room correction or tone controls will ever be able to fix.

[GuillaumeB]

Money for nothing and your "tweaks" for free! 

Guillaume

[Jayyyy]

Where do you find these tone controls?

[David A]

…
As @IanG-UK says, acoustic foam has a big impact on the way the room sounds. As an example; I posted here a while ago that my new living room sounded fantastic with the Key LS50W in it before the plaster board went up. It was just all fibre glass insulation all around. Now the plaster board is in but the room still empty, there's a 2.15 second echo in the room when I open the window latch. I tested it the other day because I was surprised by that echo. I knew it was bad but then I opened that latch and the sound just hung around I just had to time it. I tried three times and they all came out around the 2.15 second mark. Just think about that; a sound comes from your speaker and will mix with the next 2.15 seconds of music coming from that same speaker, which then mixes with the next 2.15 seconds...you get the idea. It's a mess that no room correction or tone controls will ever be able to fix.

Foam can have a big impact but so can many things and a lot of the foam around isn't the best, especially if it isn't dense enough and/or it's not thick enough because then it tends to absorb at higher frequencies only and that won't help you much.

2.15 seconds is quite a long reverberation time so I suspect your room is actually a fair size, larger than average. You said it's currently bare. That reverberation time will drop when you get furniture in and some rugs or carpet on the floor. The reverberation will be longest at bass frequencies so if it's still too long after you furnish the room and put some curtains up, you should consider bass traps of some sort. As well as "proper" acoustic bass traps you might be surprised at what you can achieve with some furniture choices. For example, a sofa with thick, dense foam cushions can have quite a beneficial effect on mid to upper bass frequencies so choosing seating with thick foam cushions and fabric rather than leather upholstery is a good choice with the advantage that it doesn't look like acoustic treatments.

With a reverberation time as long as you're reporting I'd be looking at absorption which extends well into the bass frequencies and provided you avoid absorptive materials/products which have surfaces/coverings which are reflective at high frequencies you'll also get some high frequency absorption too. With any absorption you want to pick options which are effective over as broad a frequency band as possible otherwise you run the risk of too much absorption in the high frequencies which tends to make the sound too dead. You're in northern NSW so one thing you can do to get a fair bit of absorption for free, at least for a lot of the year, is simply to have some windows and doors into the room left open when you're listening. Absorption is measured in Sabins and 1 Sabin is equivalent to the sound lost from the room through a 1 square foot opening to the outside.

There are those who swear by diffusion rather than absorption but diffusion keeps the sound reflecting around the room and won't reduce the reverberation time significantly. With the reverberation time you're reporting you're going to need absorption to reduce the reverberation time to a reasonable level and you could consider adding some diffusion then if you wish but absorption should be your starting point in order to reduce that 2.15 second reverberation considerably, probably down into the 0.2 to 0.5 second time depending on your musical tastes and personal preference. Go for a shorter reverberation time if you like vocal music or small instrumental groups and longer if you like symphonic music.

Where do you find these tone controls?

The right hand button of the 3 buttons below the volume control on the remote cycles through settings for balance, bass tone control, treble tone control, and SAM setting, You can set the hinge frequencies for both tone controls in the Configurator.

[Gerronwithit]

God luck with getting on that road to Hell! Most of the time I just have my music coming from random playlists and the variance between recordings is marked. If I started mucking about with tone controls between tracks I doubt I'd actually listen to anything. I find that remastered versions of older albums brings huge benefits but I doubt that me hanging over that tiny Devialet screen trying to manipulate treble or bass would have a very happy outcome, but, I have to admit, they were put there for a reason.

[yabaVR]

You guys are mixing up several different things that are not of the same kind.

All 'this boxes' have nothing to do with frequency response. I bet nowadays they measure all the same lineare FR. These 'boxes' like the SOtMs get you more resolution&transparency. That's not about high&lows.
You can try to compensate a bad (actually it has to be very bad) recording by turning the knobs of highs&lows but that's a whole different thing. By doing that you just push that annoying sound of a specific frequency under your level of attention or you push something up that wasn't really there or was almost  lost (old magnetic tapes).
All you do with cables has also nothing to do with frequency response. Or do you think a power cable changes something in the frequency response of your audio system? In this case think more about time&phase of a signal.
At least for me the 40000 possibilities reduce to 0 because they don't (cannot) help with any problem I would have with sound.  

gui