Question about Tone Controls + Equalizers

Music in "its purest form" is what sounds most like real music.  Having no tone controls to use and the room makes the sound thin?  Is far from purest sound when compared to real music.  From what I understand, the problem with most tone controls is the major phase shift that they caused.  Instead of just adding bass, it muddles the bass.  What we need is a linear tone control.  I have owned various small audiophile speakers. I have been using a Barcus Berry Sonic Maximizer for years. When using its adjustable linear bass boost it makes small speakers sound satisfying without any muddy sound that typical tone controls can introduce.  With the high quality small speakers I leave the processor for the high frequencies off and find a very natural balance.

I'm 70 years old and have been spinning vinyl and enjoying records for more than 50 of those years.  My first sort of "hi-fi" system came back stateside with me in 1971 after my Army duty in Belgium.  I no longer have any components from this system.  

One thing I learned over the years about audio:    "Simple is Better".

The system in my music room consists of:  
Four Turntables, 2 Belt Drive, 2 Direct Drive.
Four Emotiva XPS-1 Phono Preamps
One Passive Alpine Stepped volume control, with Source control
Two Vintage Restored 6L6 Monoblock vacuum tube amps
Two Vintage Restored Frazier "Black Box" Theater speakers.  
Speaker and Interconnect cables are modest upgrade components, nothing costing over $60 per cable.  (No Monster Wire Here!)

Note there are NO tone shaping controls in this set up as they are just not needed.  Many audio magazines over the years have recommended to keep your audio system as simple as possible for the Best Audio performance.  My system does not even have a balance control, as it's not needed.  I can actually control the volume of each mono amp by adjusting the on board input sensitivity pot.

Some of my local friends are also into quality audio, and have followed me in simplifying their audio component chain in their system to achieve better audio.  Try replacing a Preamp with Tone controls with a passive, volume only preamp.  You just may find that better audio can be found in simplifying your audio chain.        




 

Like stereo5-- I have a luxman 590axii and those tone controls work the magic when needed!! Was thinking of even trying the new mac c53 or 2700 tube unit.

Spininvinyl, I agree. When it comes to analog simple is always best and for decade I did exactly what you are doing. Then digital came along, a totally different animal. Now instead of modifying an analog signal you are just changing numbers. Numbers do not have noise or distortion. They are just numbers. A whole new world has opened up. The final product is better than what you can do in the analog world. So much so that I digitize the output of my phonoamp so that is uses the same processor as everything else. 

I no longer do vinyl and since I got my hearing aids, which work excellent BTW I never use EQ with speakers. However with headphones which account for about 30-40% of my listening I either use Roon DSP or my Schiit Loki. Until I got my hearing aids I did not realize what I was missing.I think most people over 60 have enough hearing loss to benefit from some equalization.YMMV