Why do gstreamer filters have no passthrough mode by default?

[dirac bracket]

I am trying to learn GStreamer and its audio filter plugins and was
wondering
why these filters have no passthrough mode by default?

I am for example looking at the Clementine music player's use of GStreamer,
It uses for example a "equalizer-nbands" element with 10 bands.

To "disable" the equalizer, Clementine just sets all the gains to 0dB.
I don't know how the "equalizer-nbands" element is implemented (does it
detect that all gains are 0, or does it simply does all the calculations
with
0?), but it seems to me that for any filter, there should be a default
passthrough mode
of operation to disable it? I can't see such modes in the GStreamer audio
plugins however.

Any thoughts on this?
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