Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Receiver tone control

my rxv1300 has a bass boost button it. i imagine it's the same as LC.
dan

What on earth was "loudness" control? Always struck me (even in high school, way back when) as just a way to turn the volume up.

Birdman

not so on my older panasonic stereo, it accented the bass and treble, and on the yammie, it does increase the bass level. it's only on when one of the kids accidently hits the button.

If I understand it correctly, it's there to up the lower end bass and the upper end treble so that it sounds better when listening at lower volumes. It's called loudness or bass boost or contour, sometimes (from what I've seen).

This vintage HK amp I have has a cool feature by which the effect is lessened as you turn the thing up, until it is completely defeated. It actually does make the output sound consistent all the way through the dial... for example, the bass is still present at low volumes versus almost nonexistent with the contour control off.

I've hated the control on every other amp I've had, though.

Hmpf. I apparently have tin ears, because that's the first button I turn on on a vintage receiver (or on the car stereo). Otherwise, they've just sounded anemic to me. However, since I haven't found such a thing on my H/K, I don't. I haven't touched tone controls, however, since I got semi-decent speakers.

The loudness button does the same thing as replacing your speakers with Bose. It emphasises bass and treble.

If you could see the EQ curve, I do believe it would look like a saddle.

Nowave is essentially correct. The "Loudness" control, offered in the past on Yamaha preamps and receivers and some H/K units was an extra control, which, if it was reasonably well designed (the "contour" of the control), was intended to compensate for our ear's decreasing sensitivity to low bass at quiet listening levels. You first set the volume to a normal fairly loud level. Then you'd turn down the separate Loudness control to whatever low level you preferred. As you rotated the control, it applied gradually increasing levels of bass boost which approximated the loss of bass sensitivity of our ears at low volume.

Most consumers never really understood the purpose of the control, so they gradually disappeared from consumer gear. And some applied increasing bass and treble boost (the treble boost wasn't needed). Other receivers had a cruder "Loudness" button, which when activated, applied a fixed level of bass boost--typically at least 10 dB in the low frequencies and 3 to 5 dB in the highs.

Consumers who bought small, crummy bookshelf systems in the '70s and '80s would invariably run their systems with the Loudness button always activated because it boosted the fairly non-existent bass and poor treble of cheap speakers so they sounded "better" to their ears. With good speakers, the effect was grotesque. When partying, turning up the volume with the Loudness button activated would invariably drive the low-powered receivers into clippiing and burn out woofers or tweeters. For example, making bass subjectively "twice as loud" (an increase of 10 dB) requires ten times as much power, so it was no surprise when inexpensive low-powered receivers blew out speakers driven with the Loudness button activated.

Our ears' insensitivity to deep bass at low volume have been measured and graphed by acousticians and researchers (the first were Fletcher and Munson; later research refined those curves). I suspect you could track them down with a Google search.

Regards,

I know this post is almost a month old, but I thought I'd add my 2 cents. I have a Yamaha receiver as well, and was confused that the bass / treble / balance knobs didn't seem to have any effect on the sound. I found out that switching on "Pure Direct" bypasses all tone controls, sending the signal unchanged (but amplified) to the speakers.

I think most Yamaha folks know this, but it was news to me (I had to figure it out the hard way).

Hey, ubernatural, I think you hit on the reason that he thought the controls didn't do anything! He likely had the "Pure Direct" mode engaged.

However, it is true that modern tone controls have far less boost and cut available than the old tone controls found on '60s and '70s gear. Back then, most controls had as much as 15 dB boost and cut. Now, it's rare to see any that offer more than about 8 dB boost/cut.

Regards,