Why no tone control?

[Unregistered]

I just bought a Pioneer VSX-D814 receiver and am pleased with everything except for the fact that you have no bass and treble control other than in 2 channel stereo mode. Why would they do this? Movies sound awesome, but the center channel dialog has a little too much bass (I am using an Infinity Primus c25). If I could just tweak the treble up a bit, the voices would sound so much better. Should I perhaps set the center channel to "small"?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[spenny]

if you look at most mid to high-end equipment (eg: Rega, Unison, Naim) you'll notice that they don't have anything other than inputs, volume and power.

Basically the less between the volume and the speakers, the better the sound.

 

[Votrax]

My Sony has a 3 band EQ where you can adjust the frequency and gain(+/-10dB) of the fronts/center/rears which would take care of the problem you have. I'm assuming the Pioneer has a similiar feature or am I wrong?
Excuse the crappy pic:

 

[Rob Babcock]

There's a longstanding bias against tone controls in high end components. Partly this is due to the fact that they're often poorly engineered, and a poorly designed tone control probably will due more harm than good. Any component that operates in the digital domain should be able to perform basic DSP, like tone control, very transparently.

I will say that I've really no use for tone controls, but there's no reason they can't be added to a fine preamp or int amp. Especially if a bypass is also included.

 

[av_phile]

There's probably a digital equalizer or tone control for each channel you can set set via the on-screen menu like the one pictured above on a sony. But your own suggestion to set the center channel to "SMALL" should take care of the excees bass with one fell swoop.