# The Loudness Button



## bscott (Mar 3, 2008)

Back in the 70’s, stereo manufacturers started putting a “loudness” button on home stereos. You would get a significant boost in output volume together with significant bass/midrange sound boost and improvement. I don’t know if I am explaining it correctly for you. No distortion or anything like that-unless you had already damaged your speakers. 
It gave your stereo sound a significantly new wellrounded sound.
NOW - does anyone know of a guitar pedal that produces the same kind of boost? Without adding any overdrive or distortion? It just gives your sound more bass and mid range without overwhelming the higher frequency ranges. If you are not familiar with the effect find someone with a 70s stereo and listen to your fav music with and without that “loudness” button. I have a Technics 70s stereo and use it all the time. 
Hopefully someone can come up witha “try this”. 
TYIA


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## Milkman (Feb 2, 2006)

bscott said:


> Back in the 70’s, stereo manufacturers started putting a “loudness” button on home stereos. You would get a significant boost in output volume together with significant bass/midrange sound boost and improvement. I don’t know if I am explaining it correctly for you. No distortion or anything like that-unless you had already damaged your speakers.
> It gave your stereo sound a significantly new wellrounded sound.
> NOW - does anyone know of a guitar pedal that produces the same kind of boost? Without adding any overdrive or distortion? It just gives your sound more bass and mid range without overwhelming the higher frequency ranges. If you are not familiar with the effect find someone with a 70s stereo and listen to your fav music with and without that “loudness” button. I have a Technics 70s stereo and use it all the time.
> Hopefully someone can come up witha “try this”.
> TYIA


Maybe any graphic EQ pedal?


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## RBlakeney (Mar 12, 2017)

Sonic maximizer!!!


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## Paul Running (Apr 12, 2020)

bscott said:


> Hopefully someone can come up witha “try this”.


Put this in a pedal enclosure and you have a loudness boost...the Phon pedal:


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## gtrguy (Jul 6, 2006)

Loudness controls are generally a volume dependent bass and treble boost. They were intended to compensate for the way we perceive sound at different volumes due to our ear being more sensitive to midrange than bass or treble. A Graphic EQ should do nicely- it's pretty much the typical "V" shaped curve which sounds great on it's own but less so in a mix.


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## RBlakeney (Mar 12, 2017)

I can post a useless schematic too.


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## guitarman2 (Aug 25, 2006)

Theres a reason you don't find the loudness button on good audiophile stereo systems. If you find the system anemic where it needs a loudness button you need to find another differently voiced system. If you don't like the sound of your guitar amp then, atleast in my opinion you don't have the right amp. Again just my opinion but external, added eq's on guitar amps are the wrong way to get your sound. If the eq on the amp isn't cutting it you need a different amp.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

The "loudness" button compensates for human hearing, which is evolved to be most sensitive to the frequency range of human vocalizations. It extends well beyond that range, but at very low sound-pressure levels, such as the tender whispers of a romantic partner or the fussings of an infant, our nervous system is designed to hear those sounds very easily and clearly against any other sonic backdrop.

That bias in sensitivity is not constant across all SPLs. This is expressed most clearly in the "Fletcher-Munson equal loudness curves". Below is an illustration of how that works. What we see is how much louder other frequencies would need to be, in order to be *heard *as "the same volume/loudness", at different SPLs. What you can see is that, as the SPL increases, the differential sensitivity to the highs _above_ 7khz, and lows _below_ say 300hz, decreases. It's never perfectly flat (which is probably why some speakers/monitors just sound clearer or "better" to us), but the curve does get "flatter" with increasing volume/SPL.








The "loudness" button engages a subcircuit, connected to the volume pot, which adjusts the frequency response such that, when you turn the volume down, you haven't turned it down _quite_ as much for the very low end and very high end. Since you can see that the "curve" is not entirely linear, you can imagine that the quality or adherence tosome idealized compensation, will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer.

In some respects, the compensation networks on many guitar volume pots, function as a very crude "loudness" adjustment. Of course, in the case of guitars, especially since the manufacturer has no idea how loudly they will be amplified, the compensation is really targetting loading down of the pickups, and cable capacitance issues, rather than being directed at adjusting for human hearing. But the practical effect of those bypass caps is in the same ballpark: turn down and more treble is retained, turn up and all frequencies pass with equal amplitude. "Bright" switches in amps work the same way. They provide a small-value cap that bypasses the volume control, such that more treble passes through at lower volumes than at higher volume settings.

In some respects, the traditional Big MUff Tone control provides a bit of a starting point, and is somewhat related to the sample circuit Paul provides. On a BMP, the signal passes through two simple filter section, one that passes high end,and one that passes low end. Both provide fairly simple shallow rolloffs. The Tone control simply adjusts the balance between them in reciprocal fashion. Because their corner frequencies (where the rolloff starts) are slightly staggered, the result is a "scoop" in the middle. The various issues that this or that player prefers in a BIg Muff are often dues to the location of that scoop. E.g., the Russian issues tend to move the scoop a bit higher in the spectrum as well as narrowing it a bit.

Paul's circuit probably could work, but for three considerations: 1) You need a tapped volume pot (i.e., 4 solder lugs) of the needed resistance value, and 2) As a passive circuit, there will be signal loss, so it needs a bit of boost up front to compensate for that, and 3) The component values that might be suitable for recorded music with a wide bandwidth (e.g., including cymbals as well as the deep bottom of bass and kickdrum) might be inappropriate for a single guitar.

In some respects, compensating a guitar volume, using a capacitor for highs, and a selected inductor for lows, might work. In other words, two paths for frequency content at the extremes to pass unattenuated to the output, when the volume pot is turned down. We already have the one (capacitor), so the question mark is what a suitable value for the inductor would be, and whether such values are obtainable.

Alternatively, the Gibson Varitone circuit does something similar, albeit in a fixed manner. The different rotary switch positions select between different midscoops, created by the joint action of a resistor, capacitor, and inductor, going to grouind. Like Paul's circuit, it is passive, so there is necessarily passive loss, but then that's all part of the charm of a 355 equipped with the circuit.


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## Paul Running (Apr 12, 2020)

RBlakeney said:


> useless schematic


The schematic is useful however, the NJM2153 device is now obsolete.


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## RBlakeney (Mar 12, 2017)

Paul Running said:


> The schematic is useful however, the NJM2153 device is now obsolete.


just because you keep posting them doesn’t make them useful. 
there are a small handful of people in here who can read a schematic, and the vast majority are guitar players who think you’re posting abstract art.


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## Granny Gremlin (Jun 3, 2016)

gtrguy said:


> Loudness controls are generally a volume dependent bass and treble boost. They were intended to compensate for the way we perceive sound at different volumes due to our ear being more sensitive to midrange than bass or treble. A Graphic EQ should do nicely- it's pretty much the typical "V" shaped curve which sounds great on it's own but less so in a mix.


Negatory; it's a compressor. At least on the systems I have had (per the manual). Various manufacturers may have done different things.


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## Paul Running (Apr 12, 2020)

RBlakeney said:


> there are a small handful of people in here who can read a schematic, and the vast majority are guitar players who think you’re posting abstract art.


Is that an assumption or did you take a survey?


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## RBlakeney (Mar 12, 2017)

Paul Running said:


> Is that an assumption or did you take a survey?


Survey


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

I suspect it's somewhere in the middle. Many folks here likely CAN read a schematic, in the sense of identifying the symbols and knowing this is a capacitor and that's a transistor, etc.. But they may likely not be able to look at it and organize the symbols they see into functional subcircuits. Think of it like examining one of those word-search matrices for letters that form words in your first language, vs letters that form words in a foreign language that only happens to use the same letters. Maybe Paul and I can look at a circuit and quickly recognize a this or that stage, but it will still be a jumble of familiar symbols to others and no more than that.


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## Doug Gifford (Jun 8, 2019)

guitarman2 said:


> Theres a reason you don't find the loudness button on good audiophile stereo systems. If you find the system anemic where it needs a loudness button you need to find another differently voiced system. If you don't like the sound of your guitar amp then, atleast in my opinion you don't have the right amp. Again just my opinion but eq's on guitar amps are the wrong way to get your sound. If the eq on the amp isn't cutting you need a different amp.


We may have a winner of "The world's most expensive tone control" here. Just get a new amp.


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## guitarman2 (Aug 25, 2006)

RBlakeney said:


> just because you keep posting them doesn’t make them useful.
> there are a small handful of people in here who can read a schematic, and the vast majority are guitar players who think you’re posting abstract art.


Its not a van gogh?


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## gtrguy (Jul 6, 2006)

Granny Gremlin said:


> Negatory; it's a compressor. At least on the systems I have had (per the manual). Various manufacturers may have done different things.


I've never seen one that's a compressor. Seems like an odd way to adjust the frequency response. Have a link to one of the manuals for me to check out? I've seen it referred to as "Loudness Compensation" but never referred to as a compressor.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

guitarman2 said:


> Theres a reason you don't find the loudness button on good audiophile stereo systems. If you find the system anemic where it needs a loudness button you need to find another differently voiced system. If you don't like the sound of your guitar amp then, atleast in my opinion you don't have the right amp. Again just my opinion but external, added eq's on guitar amps are the wrong way to get your sound. If the eq on the amp isn't cutting it you need a different amp.


Actually, I don't think it's that at all.

"Good" audiophile systems tend to aim for a minimalist approach, many eschewing even a simply treble and bass control, and providing only volume and channel balance. Maybe they assume top-notch speakers that will not require any adjustment. Maybe they simply assume that any needed equalization will be handed off to another product.

As well, as the diagram I included demonstrates, the compensation needed to hear all frequencies with equal loudness will depend on the _actual sound pressure level_. And since the manufacturer of the amplifier has no idea what the SPL will be once that amplifier is feeding speakers, they also have little idea of what extent of frequency compensation would provide that equal perceived loudness. The amp could be fed a hotter signal OR a cooler one from the preamp or source. The speakers could be more efficient OR less efficient. In other words, there are so many unknowns, with respect to what sort of loudness compensation would be useful or required, that the odds of providing an _erroneous_ compensation, that might provide misleading bass and treble, are pretty good.

In the late '70s, a roommate (and bandmate) had a powerful stereo system that he spent big bucks on. A Yamaha 100W/ch and big JBL speakers. My setup was a 20W/ch Luxman and some relatively inefficient DIY 2-way speakers I'm still using (the woofers eventually needed replacement after 30 years because of foam rot), and the sound quality kicked the ass of his, by his own admission. Why? Getting typical acceptable listening levels had both my amp and speakers operating in their linear range, where response was as flat as feasible. His speakers were so efficient, that you could never feed them more than a watt of power, or you wouldn't be able to hear the phone ring or yell across the house to someone. The speakers were boomy and unbalanced, and the amp was not at its cleanest.

If I was an audiophile manufacturer, as much as I know that equal perceived loudness is a good thing, I'd stay clear of including a loudness switch. Just too many ways for it to go wrong. True, if you bought a 50W/ch receiver in 1978, there's a very good chance it would include a loudness switch. But then, those sorts of products were often sold to, and by, folks who equated "better" with more bass. Those were also the sorts of units that might use a linear volume pot, rather than logarithmic, such that turning it up to the 9:00 position would yield a huge booming bass and volume, leading the customer to think "Man, if it's THIS loud at only 9:00, imagine how loud it will be _able_ to get at full blast."

Power amplifiers and most preamps are generally very flat response. The major variable in the perceived loudness is always going to be the speaker/s and their placement within the listening environment. All the other doohickeys simply try to compensate for that.


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## bscott (Mar 3, 2008)

guitarman2 said:


> Theres a reason you don't find the loudness button on good audiophile stereo systems. If you find the system anemic where it needs a loudness button you need to find another differently voiced system. If you don't like the sound of your guitar amp then, atleast in my opinion you don't have the right amp. Again just my opinion but external, added eq's on guitar amps are the wrong way to get your sound. If the eq on the amp isn't cutting it you need a different amp.


Interesting. I really don’t like to layer tons of pedals. When I see a pedal board eith, say, 3 overdrives, I wonder specifically what overdriven sound they are looking for. I am putting the signal through a Fender Deluxe Blues Reissue and overall really don’t like the tone and sound I get. A new amp is in the cards but this covid thing is complicating the search. I have been thinking Laney or some other brands with blues amps. Moderate gain and reverb.


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## bscott (Mar 3, 2008)

mhammer said:


> Actually, I don't think it's that at all.
> 
> "Good" audiophile systems tend to aim for a minimalist approach, many eschewing even a simply treble and bass control, and providing only volume and channel balance. Maybe they assume top-notch speakers that will not require any adjustment. Maybe they simply assume that any needed equalization will be handed off to another product.
> 
> ...


Ha, ha, ha. You named the specs on my 70sTechnics right on. Separate amp and preamp. JBL 112s.


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## MarkM (May 23, 2019)

bscott said:


> Interesting. I really don’t like to layer tons of pedals. When I see a pedal board eith, say, 3 overdrives, I wonder specifically what overdriven sound they are looking for. I am putting the signal through a Fender Deluxe Blues Reissue and overall really don’t like the tone and sound I get. A new amp is in the cards but this covid thing is complicating the search. I have been thinking Laney or some other brands with blues amps. Moderate gain and reverb.


I don't disagree with this comment, some of here may not be able to turn our amps up loud enough to achieve breakup. We use three pedal to get a slight breakup, Plexi and tube screamer sounds on a clean amp at low volumes. I get they have amps that achieve these sounds digitally at low volumes, just not my thing, I like small tube amps. They make me happy. To each their own I guess.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Zac Childs had one of his channel videos late last year on the topic of how small amplifiers became popular.
I suspect one of the reasons they did is that mic-ing up a BIG amp set to a low volume likely won't have the same frequency response as a lower-power amp turned way up. Not JUST the degree of crunch, but also how that crunch is distributed across the spectrum that the speaker is capable of. And if the speaker is powered enough to be up into its linear range, one may not require any sort of additional bolstering. If the speaker is an efficient 12", rated at 150W power handling and you're pushing it with 2-4W, on average, from a 22W amp, there's a good chance you're not going to hear the optimal frequency response of that speaker. It won't blow the voice coil, but it won't sound at its best.

I've noted before that my first "good" amp was a 1973 Peavey Classic with two 12s. The frequency response of the speakers at practices in our bass player's basement was fundamentally different than how they responded at a gig, where I had to turn up more. I found myself constantly running back to the amp to adjust the tone controls, or else it sounded awful.


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## Granny Gremlin (Jun 3, 2016)

gtrguy said:


> I've never seen one that's a compressor. Seems like an odd way to adjust the frequency response. Have a link to one of the manuals for me to check out? I've seen it referred to as "Loudness Compensation" but never referred to as a compressor.


1) Why do you insist it is a frequency adjustment? This is an argument starting from a conclusion. I suppose you notice a tonal difference and assumed - seepoint 3 below.

2) What part of "loudness" sounds like frequency adjustment to you exactly (I get the explanation and theory above, but this is litterally a common synonym for compression - see "the loudness wars" - this context of the term is older than you'd think in audio engineering and radio circles)?

3) Compression CAN affect frequency response (see dolby noise reduction and de-essing/sibilance controllers as extreme examples). Decreasing the dynamic range of the spikey bits and then adding make up gain litterally makes the rest of the spectrum louder; the spikey bits are usually in the mids; in more modern electronic musics it can be the bass or lower mids - in that case compression would help with vocal inteligibility.

4) It's literally what the manuals say; go look it up. This may vary by manufacturer, but all the ones I've had (Akai, NAD....) say so and sound like basic compression to me. The huge difference in apparent volume, plus the lack of extra distortion (or amp clipping) with the button on vs off is much too great for EQ (no matter how dynamic) to accomplish. It was designed to help things sound fuller and more complete at low volumes where the extremes tend to get a bit lost (as per the manuals I've perused) but I have also found it handy at parties to limit transients that might blow speakers when the stereo is turnt up. If it walks like a duck....

I know there are a lot of audiofile forum posts that talk about it being EQ, but they are inconsistant in their conclusions (some say just bass EQ, some say bass and treble), but there is the possibility it is both - frequency dependant compression. EG by runing a filter (EQ) that varies in gain as a function of the volume setting inserted into the compressor sidechain (detector circuit). This is how dolby and de-essing works. I do think some makers on some models just used straight up compression though. Others may have gotten more funky with it as just described.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Granny Gremlin said:


> Negatory; it's a compressor. At least on the systems I have had (per the manual). Various manufacturers may have done different things.


I can't refute your contention out of hand, but what you describe doesn't sound like anything I've ever encountered. So what sorts of systems or devices are you using for reference? Maybe that will reconcile what I know and what you know.

As for BBE units, I have a model 402 unit downstairs. Haven't used it in ages, but I can fire it up and let folks know what it does and doesn't do.


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## gtrguy (Jul 6, 2006)

Granny Gremlin said:


> 1) Why do you insist it is a frequency adjustment? This is an argument starting from a conclusion. I suppose you notice a tonal difference and assumed - seepoint 3 below.


So an observed tonal change is not a frequency adjustment?



Granny Gremlin said:


> 2) What part of "loudness" sounds like frequency adjustment to you exactly (I get the explanation and theory above, but this is litterally a common synonym for compression - see "the loudness wars" - this context of the term is older than you'd think in audio engineering and radio circles)?


While described as Loudness, the control in a hifi context doesn't make the *overall *gain greater, it increases low end and sometimes (depending on the implimentation) treble also to compensate for the way that our hearing works at different volume levels. Loudness wars is a different thing altogether- compressing recorded material to make the dynamic range much less, essentially everything louder all the time.



Granny Gremlin said:


> 3) Compression CAN affect frequency response (see dolby noise reduction and de-essing/sibilance controllers as extreme examples). Decreasing the dynamic range of the spikey bits and then adding make up gain litterally makes the rest of the spectrum louder; the spikey bits are usually in the mids; in more modern electronic musics it can be the bass or lower mids - in that case compression would help with vocal inteligibility.


I'm familiar with the concept of pre-emphasis/de-emphasis as used in dolby noise reduction and similarly the companding circuits in analog delays and modulations. While you could use a *multiband* compressor to increase the makeup gain of specific frequency ranges to boost bass or treble I again suggest that's a weird way to do it when you could simply use an EQ. As far as intelligibility of vocals- yes a compressor is VERY useful for that but you're controlling the dynamic range of one instrument (the voice) within a mix, you're not adjusting particular frequency ranges of the vocal just using compression unless you're using a multiband compressor.



Granny Gremlin said:


> 4) It's literally what the manuals say; go look it up. This may vary by manufacturer, but all the ones I've had (Akai, NAD....) say so and sound like basic compression to me. The huge difference in apparent volume, plus the lack of extra distortion (or amp clipping) with the button on vs off is much too great for EQ (no matter how dynamic) to accomplish. It was designed to help things sound fuller and more complete at low volumes where the extremes tend to get a bit lost (as per the manuals I've perused) but I have also found it handy at parties to limit transients that might blow speakers when the stereo is turnt up. If it walks like a duck....


I'd love to check out one of the manuals for the Akai or NAD that describe it as compression. Could you provide a link or suggest a particular model I could check out? This is the loudness circuit from the Technics SA series receivers:










The Loudness control in this example is clearly nothing more than a switchable RC filter that provides a bass boost (9db at 50Hz according to the manual). With regards to the clipping- the loudness control generally does less the louder the amp is turned up so clipping due to the loudness control isn't an issue. Note how the loudness circuit above is wired- as the volume control is increased less and less of the signal will be passed through the RC filter. Why? Because at low volumes we hear more midrange and less bass and treble (Fletcher-Munson curves). At high volumes our ear has a flatter frequency response and doesn't require boosting of the bassand/or treble to get a "good" sound.



Granny Gremlin said:


> I know there are a lot of audiofile forum posts that talk about it being EQ, but they are inconsistant in their conclusions (some say just bass EQ, some say bass and treble), but there is the possibility it is both - frequency dependant compression. EG by runing a filter (EQ) that varies in gain as a function of the volume setting inserted into the compressor sidechain (detector circuit). This is how dolby and de-essing works. I do think some makers on some models just used straight up compression though. Others may have gotten more funky with it as just described.


I can't say I frequent audiophile sites much but a bit of quick searching for more technical information generally indicates it to be an EQ function and not a compressor function. However, I might be looking at the wrong articles or the wrong receivers, there's more than one way to skin a cat- please suggest a NAD or Akai that I could look at that uses compression for the loudness function. In the meantime, here are a couple of articles to check out:

Electronics World December 1963

The Mysterious Loudness Control


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Compressors and compression does have a way of often dulling the sound of a guitar, which is why so many more recent compressors will include a "Blend" control for combining some uncompressed signal with compressed.

WHY do compressors behave that way? My sense is that it relates to the temporal distribution of harmonic content in a plucked string. They start out with lots more harmonic content in the pick attack, and quickly dampen back down to more fundamental and lower-order harmonics. Because the gain/level reduction action occurs at that first transient peak, where all the harmonic content lives, and then brings up the level of a decaying string, which is largely devoid of harmonic content. The end result sounds not nearly as bright.

I've been using various categories of compression (OTA, optical, FET) for over 40 years, and while they will vary in their bandwidth and fidelity, they pretty much all do this.

As for BBE, my understanding is that it introduces some phase adjustment. In the real world, we expect that the harmonics and fundamental of a struck or plucked object will align in a certain way. That's part of how we know that _this_ harmonic goes with _that _fundamental, and part of how we perceive the timbre of a sound source. Electronic processing of sound can often introduce phase-lag for some frequency groups/ranges, that knocks them out of alignment with the other frequency ranges they accompany at source. It's not a HUGE misalignment, but it makes perceptually grouping fundamentals and harmonics harder do for the listener.

Here's an analogy to convey the idea. I've taken the above paragraph and dislodged it into a few parts, diagonally. Not by much, and not removing anything. But putting the pieces that make up each letter and word back together, to form an easily coherent whole, involves a lot more work, since many of the letters are not in their typical easily-recognizable form. You can still read it, but it's perceptibly harder to do. That's sort of the difference between having fundamentals and their associated harmonics aligned vs unaligned.


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

For my layman ears, pressing in 'loudness' is much easier than mucking around with the EQ.
And as far as Dolby is concerned ..


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## gtrguy (Jul 6, 2006)

laristotle said:


> For my layman ears, pressing in 'loudness' is much easier than mucking around with the EQ.


I'm of the opinion that if something sounds good then that's all that matters.


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## Granny Gremlin (Jun 3, 2016)

gtrguy said:


> View attachment 395853
> 
> 
> The Loudness control in this example is clearly nothing more than a switchable RC filter that provides a bass boost (9db at 50Hz according to the manual). With regards to the clipping- the loudness control generally does less the louder the amp is turned up so clipping due to the loudness control isn't an issue. Note how the loudness circuit above is wired- as the volume control is increased less and less of the signal will be passed through the RC filter. Why? Because at low volumes we hear more midrange and less bass and treble (Fletcher-Munson curves). At high volumes our ear has a flatter frequency response and doesn't require boosting of the bassand/or treble to get a "good" sound.
> ...


You know what, my bad. I conflated the Loudness feature on my old amps with the compression feature on some of my old tape decks (ostensibly for use when making mix tapes to play back in the car and or walkman where there's more environmental noise, low levels, and you're not using your nice big expensive loudspeakers). Sorry about that.

Adding to my confusion is that the NAD 3240PE I used to have (now lives at me folk's - wonderful amp) had both a Bass EQ button *not counting the regular tone controls - an on/off preset thing) as well as Loudness. Just looked up the manual for that and apparently they are both doing similar things in terms of bass boost (loudness also doing something to the treble in order to overcome noise at lower listening levels). Also had a rumble filter (sub bass cut below 20 hz) which was a good safety when using the other options in addition to it's intended use for filtering out noise and resonances from turntables. Forget which Akai I had. My newer NAD Monitor Series preamp did away with the Loudness control, but still has the Bass EQ (as well as semi-parametric tone controls whch I find really useful).


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## bscott (Mar 3, 2008)

The Fender Engager Boost. Demos, non Fender sponsored, seems to do what I was looking for. Actually Fender demos are terrble for this pedal


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## zach_s (Jan 6, 2022)

bscott said:


> Back in the 70’s, stereo manufacturers started putting a “loudness” button on home stereos. You would get a significant boost in output volume together with significant bass/midrange sound boost and improvement. I don’t know if I am explaining it correctly for you. No distortion or anything like that-unless you had already damaged your speakers.
> It gave your stereo sound a significantly new wellrounded sound.
> NOW - does anyone know of a guitar pedal that produces the same kind of boost? Without adding any overdrive or distortion? It just gives your sound more bass and mid range without overwhelming the higher frequency ranges. If you


EQs. graphic or parametric your pref decides.
compressors/limiters can aid
you will have to dial in the EQ and adjust the output so you don't overdrive the preamp.

because if you "juice" the EQ output you can get the preamp in the amp to distort.
so you'll have to dial that in to your needs.

as suggested elsewhere try a U or smile curve first. 

here's an interesting and not very expensive consideration.
yamaha compressor/EQ. very versatile.

$80.00 used roughly. cheaper if you're lucky.


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## tomee2 (Feb 27, 2017)

"Loudness" on typical 70s home stereo is what mhammer described... a volume dependent EQ that boosted bass and treble. As the volume control went up, the eq effect was lessened. 
In constant, parametric EQ or regular tone controls changed the frequency for all volume levels, so if you adjusted it to sound nice at background levels, as you turned the volume up it would get boomy and bright. A good loudness control adds nice bass and treble emphasis at low volumes but disappears as you crank it. 

Audiophile amps, with no loudness or tone controls, might sound better but you need to play your syem loud to overcome that Fletcher Munson curve discussed above. Most people never listen that loud, so the loudness compensation was invented. Yamaha even used a variable loudness knob on some amps. 
And the presence of tone controls doesn't always signify a low end preamp or amp, look up Accuphase or McIntosh, or Yamaha sold in Japan, most of their products have tone controls.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

zach_s said:


> EQs. graphic or parametric your pref decides.
> compressors/limiters can aid
> you will have to dial in the EQ and adjust the output so you don't overdrive the preamp.
> 
> ...


Hah! I bought mine for $25 or close to that.
I don't find that it brightens compression very much. But insomuch as a compressor can be used to make an overdrive sound "creamier", this helps to tailor the overdrive's tone.


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## zach_s (Jan 6, 2022)

tomee2 said:


> "Loudness" on typical 70s home stereo is what mhammer described...
> 
> [...]
> 
> And the presence of tone controls doesn't always signify a low end preamp or amp, look up Accuphase or McIntosh, or Yamaha sold in Japan, most of their products have tone controls.


many have "defeat" modes to bypass the tone stack. best of both worlds.


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## zach_s (Jan 6, 2022)

mhammer said:


> Hah! I bought mine for $25 or close to that.
> I don't find that it brightens compression very much. But insomuch as a compressor can be used to make an overdrive sound "creamier", this helps to tailor the overdrive's tone.


you paid reasonably used contrats. i paid $50 for mine years ago.

the used market is over priced it seems these days. that era of yamaha pedals is under appreciated IMO but people over ask for anything "vintage".

tradeoff for compressor on board is fewer bands to toy with. but an EQ could work.
depends what the original poster wants and their prefs. number of ways to do it.

could also use an octaver with the right blend to fatten the bottom end without fear of mud. neil young uses that trick for his fender combos.


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## BMW-KTM (Apr 7, 2015)

bscott said:


> You would get a significant boost in output volume together with significant bass/midrange sound boost and improvement.
> 
> ... does anyone know of a guitar pedal that produces the same kind of boost? Without adding any overdrive or distortion? It just gives your sound more bass and mid range without overwhelming the higher frequency ranges.


That's pretty much exactly what an EP Booster does. I have one. I use it as a compensator pedal when switch from humbuckers to single coils to sort of level out the volume and tone.


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## zach_s (Jan 6, 2022)

bscott said:


> Hopefully someone can come up witha “try this”.


this may be of interest.
demo compressor


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## bscott (Mar 3, 2008)

zach_s said:


> EQs. graphic or parametric your pref decides.
> compressors/limiters can aid
> you will have to dial in the EQ and adjust the output so you don't overdrive the preamp.
> 
> ...


I find this option interesting. 


zach_s said:


> EQs. graphic or parametric your pref decides.
> compressors/limiters can aid
> you will have to dial in the EQ and adjust the output so you don't overdrive the preamp.
> 
> ...


I find this option interesting. I will give the engager boost a workout and the consider this option. Thanks


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## AJ6stringsting (Mar 12, 2006)

I have 2112 SGS, by DigiTech, it has two 12ax7 tubes and with MIDI control, I can boost my signal up 6db's for soloing


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## AJ6stringsting (Mar 12, 2006)

I have 2112 SGS, by DigiTech, it has two 12ax7 tubes and with MIDI control, I can boost my signal up 6db's for soloing


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## AJ6stringsting (Mar 12, 2006)

I have 2112 SGS, by DigiTech, it has two 12ax7 tubes and with MIDI control, I can boost my signal up 6db's for soloing


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