Tone control for Superuniti

I never used my bass tone control in my old Linn Classik. I decided to add a Sub Rel. After a few weeks with my new Unitilite My Sub Rel T/7I still to delight with deep and credible bass that no tone control can replace.

Ciao

Anto

This whole discussion is not new. The whole fad of graphic equalisers in the 80s was not simply confined to dirt cheap nast midi systems. There were some expensive units around too because then, as now, there are those whole feel the need to correct the source signal and/or correct for the room. Equalisers certainly wasn't the accepted purist's view but they were fairly popular nontheless.

Also unchanged is that then, as now, some manufacturers have stated their beleif on which approach is best and, as a consumer, we each need to do some thinking about whether we agree with a given approach and choose products accordingly. Paul Stephenson has made it clear he doesn't think correction at even the digital level is more than a gimmick currently. That would include digital tone controls. Bear in mind that even Linn don't go this far. Exakt provides room profiling but they don't then let the user go messing about with the bass and trebble. Liekwise Naim takes a very purist view of the signal path which extends all the way to the design of Statement.

Bear in mind that if a recording still sounds lifeless or unbalanced after room correction and/or treating the room and choosing appropriate speakers for your environment, maybe the truth is that you don't like piece of music as it was intended to be heard. Certainly, my tastes in music have dramitcally changed with each upgrade with whole batches of my collection never to be heard again. Not because the Naim makes them sound bad but because it shows them up for what they are in some cases.

I think the crux of the issue is that, if you feel that this is wrong, maybe another manufacturer would suit you better. I mean that earnestly. Naim is not the only team in the league and there are many other truly great products out there made with very different ways of thinking.

I think the question of  'loudness' compensation - trying to make the tonal balance of the music sound the same if you play quietly as when you play at more natural levels is a valid one, because it is a simple fact that the ear's sensitivity varies with sound level, and if you like the balance of sound of your suystem at a normal level you might not like it as much turned down low, yet in real life situations it can sometimes be necessary to play quieter than you want to, or not at all -  and as I said, Naim do it in the Bentley system.

As for tone controls for more general tinkering, I personally found a balance I like through appropriate choice of system, and haven't felt the slightest inclination of need for almost 40 years...  However if anyone does hanker after that (again, as distinct from the loudness issue the OP raised), the desire does not render their liking of Naim equipment wronG if Naim in all other ways gives them a sound they like. But if lack of bass extension is the problem, I commend looking at the speakers, whether that is getting a decent truly  full range pair, or as some have mentioned adding a sub, though my understanding is that finding a truly musical sub, with an amp to match the quality of the main, and blending well with the main system isn't easy (on which subject, anyone tried the Wilson Benesch Torus?)

Innocent Bystander posted

Naim do include a loudness control in the Bentley system, so why not in home hi fi?

Good question.  Possibly because there is a ton of DSP processing already going on in the Bentley system, e.g. Dirac room correction software, so it's pretty straightforward to add a few lines of code to provide a loudness feature.

Also I think the traditional black-box products are designed with a more 'hair shirt' purist ethos where any additional features that might detract from achieving the ultimate sound quality are viewed with suspicion.

Innocent Bystander posted:

 

Naim do include a loudness control in the Bentley system, so why not in home hi fi?

 

Actually - it has already been included in UnititQute 2. It works as you describe. 

Pyrrhon posted:

catalinmetal posted:

so how about high-fidelity? do we care about this, or just be tricked sweetly for our own liking?

i think the main goal for serious hi-fi gear is to show the recording as intended, or at least as little as altered as possible.

rooms will never be perfect in a home environment, but methods exist to correct many of their non-linear behavior... if speaker lack bass, get a bassy-er one, or a sub, if recording lacks bass - well you want to hear what's recorded or just spoil that and hear just what you want?

in this second case, why buy hi-fi in the first place, and not get some cheap electronics with lots of controls that deliver sounds in whatever manner?

no offence intended, just want to understand the purpose of the thread...

suffice to say that most of the hi-fi and hi-end gear has it's own coloration... if we brutally alter this, then the fidelity word will lose it's meaning... just my 2 cents.

To your understanding: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour

This is science here, its a fact that when you play with the volume loudness, perceived sound level does not go up and down in a straight fashion across the frequency band. Lower the volume while playing a song and youll see that bass dissapears faster then treble. So the idea is that if what we call balance is achieved at a level x then its not balanced at level y. 

Hope it was clear !

well, those things were studied by me back to the college years, some 20 years ago... so you tell me nothing new... by that time, internet was in it's first steps and  those thing were read in specialised documents and books... and i have actually contributed on a new showroom tuning for a dealer here in Bucharest, together with a specialist in acoustics... there were point where no theory nor software could really help at all... only poor human ear and experiments.

so again, there will be little theory you can surprise me with in this field...

what i wanted to say is rather ideological: do we accept the setup as is and integrate it in the room without altering the signal through the system, but with acoustic treatments, or even just embrace the facts that, in a totally anechoic room, the sound, even though as perfect as possible, could might not be to our liking at all... it's all about where we accept the trade-out... i would rather let the signal throughout the system as unaltered as i can, but that's just me!

Furthermore, even though an anechoic chamber is usually used in the design process,  HiFi speakers aren't designed for actual operation in one.  They're designed for operation in a typically compromised domestic setting.

It's not possible to have a single optimal setting (or a single optimal progression of settings) for a loudness control as the frequencies to be boosted will depend on the room resonances.   If you don't allow for room modes, certain frequencies will come to dominate even more than at normal listening levels.  The room resonant frequencies will typically be +10dB or more higher than other bass frequencies and hence will be less affected by the eqi-loudness contour.  When you apply a 'loudness boost' the effect then appears even more prominent due to their being perceptually less change to these frequencies and also due to the change relative to background noise.

As George pointed out, you also need to take into account the encoding level, so you can't just pre-programme the relative level change either.

...and that's why things are a bit simpler in e.g. a Bentley as the dimensions and speaker positioning are all the same for a particular model.  Although maybe you'd need to make fine adjustments according to your choices from the options list - perhaps a "Wilton Carpet" button?  :-) 

Scanning through the thread I didn't see this suggested ...

But if you were to use MinimServer as your UPnP server, it is possible with the MinimStreamer transcoder add-on to do some room correction / PEQ (Parametric EQ).  Have a search for "minimstreamer room correction" should find the relevant thread that I recall.

I'm not using this myself but have read about it only.  Of course this is only a solution for streamed (UPnP audio).

Another alternative would be to add a PC (or Mac) as the source for your SuperUniti which could then run DIRAC or another room correction or PEQ in software. Or looking at alternative hardware you could run a ND5 into a MiniDSP DDRC and then into the SuperUniti (or another DAC) keeping in the digital domain throughout.

Eloise

PS. I'm not wanting to enter a debate over if Room EQ and other EQ is a good or bad idea, just offering a few suggestions how it could be done in the context of a Naim system.