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Adding Tone Controls?

My system sounds wonderful when playing well recorded jazz, classical, or "audiophile approved" material. Unfortunately, mass market pop frequently sounds horrible, with screechy splashy highs. It's obviously recorded with a built in bias to be played on car radios or lo-fi mp3s.
What can I add to my system to tone-down the highs on this sort of material? Sure, there's plenty of well recorded material to listen to, but there are plenty of pop rock bands I'd really like to explore if the recordings could be made a bit more listenable.
bama214

Showing 2 responses by rlwainwright

rlwainwright
1,904 posts
 
Oh for heaven's sake, he's already listening to abysmally recorded albums and you're gonna worry about the supposedly deleterious effects of an equalizer? Some times I wonder if some of you guys made it thru grade school.

Buy a decent parametric equalizer, should be about 200-300 bucks and then dial back the offending frequencies when listening to such albums. When you're listening to "audiophile-approved" recordings, simply switch the EQ out of the signal path...

-RW-
rlwainwright
1,904 posts
 
Oh yeah, that's a smart way to go about it - not! Interconnects and speaker wires have very subtle effects if any at all. And they would always be in the signal path, thus "tailoring" the sound for all sources. Not to mention the hassle of swapping them in and out and the time and money spent purchasing them only to find out they didn't do what was needed.

And if you're buying interconnects and speaker wires that have multi-decibel effects upon certain portions (frequencies) of the signal, you're buying very poorly made products. EQ is the way to go, plain and simple...

-RW-
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