Naw, you’re trying to distort the big picture as always.
Ironically, what you were characterizing as “distortions“ in my post are actually clarifications of the subject.
Remember: the issue isn’t that you relentlessly point out systems that are not “high Fidelity.” Everyone here knows that some tube amplifiers under the right conditions can be less accurate.
The point is that you were continually implying a type of audiophile-shaming of those who do not toe the line of the highest fidelity in their system choice. That’s why we point out that “you do it too.” Your replies is essentially: “but it’s OK when I do it because I can turn it on and off.” Which doesn’t exactly address this issue. If you were all about “high Fidelity” you wouldn’t be up mixing two channel music to surround. Sure, that’s your choice. But is other peoples choice to also enjoy somewhat less Fidelity when they like it. Your version is no more virtuous.
There's not a thing wrong with having tone controls on your preamp, as long as you can turn them to Flat or switch them out
of the signal path when not desired. All that's fine.
Which leads to questions:
1. What use our tone controls if you don’t use them?
But if you are going to use them as you suggest is fine:
2. Why is it OK to color the sound with tone controls as you desire? Every time you do, you are departing from the goal of high Fidelity. The system is only high Fidelity if you choose to use it as such.
3. How often is one allowed to use the tone controls to depart from high Fidelity and nudge the sound towards one’s taste? Once a week? Twice a week? Every other album? I hope you will agree that any attempt to answer this will show arbitrariness.
So
4. What if it turns out that someone actually prefers a certain tone control setting across-the-board. He just likes the sound of the system with that setting, even though it departs somewhat from high Fidelity. What does it matter that the system was high Fidelity since the default setting of the system is not to the users taste? Let me remind you, that if you say “ well, that person just isn’t into high Fidelity” then you go back to the arbitrary problem as to how many times and for how long the tone controls can be used without that claim being made against somebody else.
5. What if instead of tone controls, somebody has a tube amplifier that happens to slightly modify the sound of his system and the way he likes across-the-board? That would be essentially the same as having a high Fidelity system with a nudge of EQ on all the time. “ why have controls if you’re not going to use them? And since the decision to use controls means, you are simply modulating the sound of your system as you like it, why criticize somebody else’s method of doing so?
“ but in a high Fidelity system, you can turn the colouration off!”
Well, so what? Why would that matter if somebody doesn’t want to turn the colouration off and likes it on?
Further, a solid system with tone controls may not offer the other things somebody gets out of owning a tube amp. For one thing you might not be able to dial in precisely the type of distortion the tube app is creating, and therefore not precisely re-create what the user likes in the sound.
Secondly, the tube app may offer the owner, aesthetic and conceptual pleasures that he simply doesn’t get from the solid state system with tone controls. He gets the colouration he wants, along with the aesthetic pleasure of the look of the tube and the glowing tubes, as well as the conceptual pleasure of how to work and their connection to audio history. You can’t just “ dial those features in “ using tone controls.
So while it may be true, the starting off with a totally neutral solid-state system, and employing tone control sometimes might satisfy one persons taste and goals, it may not be the best solution to satisfying somebody else’s taste and goals. That’s why across-the-board recommendations like “you should always start with a neutral solid state system and then dial an EQ” doesn’t work for everyone. That certainly may be decent advice for a newbie, but audio files who’ve been in the game for a long time and tried to all sorts of different things, and discovered how to satisfy their own taste can justify other approaches.
Finally: as I’ve argued many times before, I find hand ringing over how much a tube amp departs from “high Fidelity” to often be making a mountain out of a mole hill.
OTOH if the opposite is true and anything in the gear modifies the source in a way that's not removable, it's no longer a High Fidelity system
It’s also not a high Fidelity system when you are using tone controls.
Or changing two channel sources to surround.