Best chip for digital tone control in high-end preamp ?

[bongo1]

i would like do build a new high-end preamp, as the potentiometers of my actual design are going to die now after about 20 years.

as i would like to avoid potentiometers for the new design, i'm looking for the "best solution for high quality tone control" without using potentiometers.

which chip (or circuit) does the best tone control, to be used for high-end audio?

regards
bongo

[macboy]

If you are doing analog input to analog output, then why do "digital" tone control? Adding ADC and DAC in the signal path will not do you any good. Stick with an analog circuit, and use digital potentiometers in place of the traditional ones.

If you are already in the digital domain, then consider something like the (now kind of old) TAS3103. This is a DSP that doesn't require writing any DSP code, you just configure the various processing blocks (filters, mixers, etc.). You will still need to do a fair bit of microcontroller coding work.

You may be able to avoid the microcontroller if you choose the analog circuit with digital potentiometers, as you can find some digital pots with step-up and step-down inputs, which you can interface directly to buttons or a suitable rotary encoder.

[bongo1]

maybe, the title was misleading!

what i'm looking for is a chip (or a circuit) to be inserted to the analog path (between source selector and volume control) to either do treble/bass correction or equalization.
this has to be done at the best possible quality. therefore i'm not sure if it's the better way to use a fully integrated solution, or a legacy solution with op-amps and filters, replacing the potentiometers with integrated digital potentiometers.

what do you recommend?

the whole thing has to be controlled digitally, as i have a small cpu on the unit anyway.

[macboy]

There are chips that do tone control with digital control, just search for "tone control" at digi-key to find examples. However, they do not have great audio specs. You will probably do better with a traditional circuit using high-grade digitally controlled potentiometers. I don't have specific suggestions for the pots, but several people here have built digitally controlled attenuators, so you can probably find what you need.