Tone controls- to use or not?

I have always thought that a good equalizer should be part of every system.The supporting reasoning is that every different artist has a different recording engineer in the studio. Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't every recording studio have a means of altering the sound to suit that particular engineer's ears? EVERYONE'S EARS ARE DIFFERENT!!!The person or persons that say that the "best system" needs no further equalization to compensate for the absences or excesses of certain frequencies in recorded material are wrong. Plain and simple, while some material may sound better without altering the recording engineer's original settings, there are many that will sound better with some slight adjustments. If it has them, tweaking the tone controls on a particular receiver or preamp will only cut or add at certain frequencies. Don't take this the wrong way, but if I had the system that you have, I really wouldn't be all that concerned about being a "purist" and going without equalization. Buy a good equalizer!

I think the problem here is that the term 'good equalizer' in this day and age is a bit oxymoronic. Back in the old days, Harmon Kardon had a preamp call the Citation One, which employed switched tone controls, i.e. the tone controls were built up out of rotary switches. This allowed them to be truly flat when set to the flat position. I've not seen a modern EQ unit that had that sort of attention to detail.

I've had my hands on some fairly good units, both the analog and digital Accuphase units, which are arguably amoungst the cream of the crop in equalizers. Despite serious room anomolies that the EQ units could correct (somewhat, there was a bass node that they couldn't touch), the system sounded remarkably better using no EQ at all... by 'better': more impact, greater soundstage, more detail, smoother overall sound...

Hibosilver - Equalization in the studio is mostly done to individual instruments before mixing. Almost everything today is recorded digitaly and equalization is done the same way (stable and easy to control digital filters) - not possible at home - unless you want to go A/D, DSP processing and D/A with possible loss of sound quality.

Musicnoise - original question was about what is better adjust treble with tone controls or using brighter system (speakers, cables, amplifiers atc). I expressed opinion that adding extra element that is known for distroying imaging and clarity is not the best idea if you can do it by proper system selection. Bringing statement "insulting to people with hearing handicap" into technical discussion is plain silly.

Atmasphere...The Behringer DEQ2496 does its equalization in a DSP chip, and the EQ function (or any of the other functions) can be bypassed. If that isn't good enough just turn off the power and you get a hard bypass (input connected to output).

Eldartford, I have yet to hear a Behringer that I'd want to put in my system! All of them I have heard so far are easily surpassed by other manufacturers for not a lot of extra money. My impression so far is that they target the entry-level semi-pro market. Is that impression incorrect?