Tone Controls for SB Touch?

[autoformer]

I have several SB Touch units and find them very useful in applications around the house, ranging from high end systems to "kitchen radio" type applications connected to powered speakers.

On my own systems, I run the Touch into a good DAC, but In my wife's small library, in the interest of simplicity, I am using the Squeezebox Touch analog outputs direct to a single ended triode tube amp I built, which drives a pair of high efficiency full range drivers. It sounds very good, but I'd like to be able to do a bit of mild EQ. Is there any way to do simple (bass/treble) tone control on the SB Touch?

Honestly, I never understood the practice of eliminating tone controls that started back in the 80s. My McIntosh preamps all have tone controls with a bypass, which works just great. Not all music is well-produced and a lot of the material we all enjoy could use a little tone control here and there. A lot of that good 70s rock needs eq help.

So, is there any viable DSP plug-in or something that would allow this, or am I going to be assembling a little tone control circuit to put inline between the Touch and my amp?

[autoformer]

I ended up just getting a "3 band tone control" kit from a hi fi supplier in Hong Kong. I'll build it up and put it in a little box and that should work well enough.

My main listening systems are set up so that with well-recorded material, no tone control is necessary. It's not really about the quality of the system. Certain recordings are just poorly done and require a bit of help. Why not have tone controls in your system with a bypass when you don't need it, that's designed in such a way that it doesn't compromise sound when bypassed? Removing tone controls seems idiotic to me.

[Mnyb]

I ended up just getting a "3 band tone control" kit from a hi fi supplier in Hong Kong. I'll build it up and put it in a little box and that should work well enough.

My main listening systems are set up so that with well-recorded material, no tone control is necessary. It's not really about the quality of the system. Certain recordings are just poorly done and require a bit of help. Why not have tone controls in your system with a bypass when you don't need it, that's designed in such a way that it doesn't compromise sound when bypassed? Removing tone controls seems idiotic to me.

I agree My meridian system has tone controls the treble is in reality a reincarnation of the "tilt" control that quad used to have very good idea.

There is also the inguz plugin and brutefir but they may be overkill.

[adamdea]

Well it seems to be bit late for you but inguz will give you 3 band to umpteen band eq plus balance and inter channel delay (useful if speakers are different distances from listener). All for free except some time fiddling around. And that is without getting involved in proper DRC which is the logical next step.

[JohnSwenson]

Another option is to use SOX. When SBS resamples files it uses a program calles SOX which comes with SBS. SOX can do FAR more than just resample, it has a broad range of filter options and "effects". In SBS there is a file you can edit that defines what SOX will do, its fairly easy to add almost any type of filtering (tone controls) to this.

I haven't done this myself but there is a thread some where in these forums that goes into detail on exactly how to do it. Search for SOX and it should pop up.

John S.

[Phil Leigh]

Another option is to use SOX. When SBS resamples files it uses a program calles SOX which comes with SBS. SOX can do FAR more than just resample, it has a broad range of filter options and "effects". In SBS there is a file you can edit that defines what SOX will do, its fairly easy to add almost any type of filtering (tone controls) to this.

I haven't done this myself but there is a thread some where in these forums that goes into detail on exactly how to do it. Search for SOX and it should pop up.

John S.

Inguz is a much more usable option for EQ than SOX... It has a UI within SBS !
Inguz+iPeng is as close to having actual EQ "knobs" as you can get. SOX is fine for a one-time "set and forget" solution.

[Mnyb]

It would be an interesting plugin idea to develop a gui for sox that also worked on the fly, with menus on the Touch itself too.

[autoformer]

Ok had a go at installing Inguz. The plug-in appears in my SB "Plug-ins" panel, and the EQ controls appear in the "Extras" area of my SB Touch. But changing settings has no effect. A clue is that under "file types" on the "Advanced" panel, the Ingus DSP does not appear as an option for the various file types.

Does anyone know how to correct this?

Thanks!

[Phil Leigh]

Ok had a go at installing Inguz. The plug-in appears in my SB "Plug-ins" panel, and the EQ controls appear in the "Extras" area of my SB Touch. But changing settings has no effect. A clue is that under "file types" on the "Advanced" panel, the Ingus DSP does not appear as an option for the various file types.

Does anyone know how to correct this?

Thanks!

Changing settings doesn't work while the track is playing... you have to stop/restart the track. This is true of any externally pipelined software DSP solution... if you think about it, many packets of adjusted data are already sitting in the players buffer and a change now to the EQ on the server won't/can't alter those packets already sitting on the client...

Additionally, the parameters that control Inguz/sox etc are only consulted at start of play, not continuously during playback of a track.

However, you say your Filetytpes are not showing Inguz?
Have you installed Inguzdsp.exe into your SBS server directory? You have to download that seperately.

Can you post the contents of the file custom-convert.conf from the Inguz folder on your server?

[adamdea]

Another option is to use SOX. When SBS resamples files it uses a program calles SOX which comes with SBS. SOX can do FAR more than just resample, it has a broad range of filter options and "effects". In SBS there is a file you can edit that defines what SOX will do, its fairly easy to add almost any type of filtering (tone controls) to this.

I haven't done this myself but there is a thread some where in these forums that goes into detail on exactly how to do it. Search for SOX and it should pop up.

John S.

Coincidentally I have been obsessing recently about digital filters and time domain effects.
It occurred to me that one could use sox to create pretty well any kind of filter including the apparently miraculous meridian apodising minimum phase filter, or even a very nearly perfect sinc filter. As I understand it the mmampf can be put almost anywhere in the ADC-DAC chain with equal effect-that is to say the removal of any upstream pre-ringing as long as there is only one such filter in the chain(which is of course a tricky imponderable unless one knows the filter in the ADC which made the recorder.)

I am wondering whether a mass experiment is in order to discover whether filter pre-ringing is detectable.