Noobie question ...

Sure. He was there and you were not. Besides, tone controls, bass and treble, are too crude to do anything useful.

Kal

Zaikesman: "Please excuse the essay, but I must beg to differ with the eminent Kal here, and also the extension from his comments that Macrojack suggests."
Dunno if we really differ. I like ketchup but it ain't my favorite condiment.

Yes, you can do a lot damage with a PEQ if you don't know how to use it but the same can be said for traditional bass and treble controls. (Or, in fact, any really useful tool.) I am old enough to remember when people kept them both turned up (along with the 'loudness' control). The only essential tool is a good ear. With that the old B&T controls can offer a modicum of tuning but, as you do, I prefer an adjustable shelving control. For that, I use the Z-Systems RDP-1 which lets me tweak the tonal balance a bit without throwing a blanket (or ice-cubes) on the music.

I find it encouraging that newer AVRs, with their DSP engines, are offering B&T and/or PEQs in the digital domain and no signal corruption. My Meridian 861 (other system from the one with the RDP-1) does this, too.

Eldartford: "Kr4...There was a time when you needed to turn the BASS and TREBLE controls all the way up to make lousy speakers sound right."

If you say so. I never had lousy speakers. :-)

Kal

Well, first note the smiley at the end of the quip.

Second, I do go back all the way to the mid-50s when I bought my first component system and, yes, that speaker system (singular and no-name) sucked. But, of course, I was a total newbie and there wasn't anyone to turn to for guidance. Following that, I had:
An RCA 12" coax in a large bass reflex
A pair of Weathers Book speakers and DVC University woofer (transition to stereo in 1958)
A pair of Jensen TF-3Bs
A pair of Altec A-7s
That took me to 1969 when I started building IMF TLS clones and moved into the "high end."

So, for their time, none of them were lousy, with the possible exception of the no-name one. I had tone controls until 1969.

Kal