Why balance controls? I think this is summed up nicely by Anthony H. Cordesman in an old Stereophile review from 1987.
"No serious audiophile is going to be so much of a purist as to eliminate the balance control, simply because so many recordings have slightly unbalanced channels. Since the balance control acts as the "imaging control," and minor adjustments are essential to getting the proper spread and depth of instruments from right to left, no halfway decent system can do without one. Only an audiophile content with a system that never had proper musical focus could bear to listen to music without at least occasionally adjusting system balance." - Anthony H. Cordesman, from an old Stereophile review from 1987.
http://stereophile.com/content/mod-squad-line-drive-passive-preamplifier
I think this is still true in our digital age.
"No serious audiophile is going to be so much of a purist as to eliminate the balance control, simply because so many recordings have slightly unbalanced channels. Since the balance control acts as the "imaging control," and minor adjustments are essential to getting the proper spread and depth of instruments from right to left, no halfway decent system can do without one. Only an audiophile content with a system that never had proper musical focus could bear to listen to music without at least occasionally adjusting system balance." - Anthony H. Cordesman, from an old Stereophile review from 1987.
http://stereophile.com/content/mod-squad-line-drive-passive-preamplifier
I think this is still true in our digital age.