AudiogoN Forums: How do you judge your system's neutrality?

How do you judge your system's neutrality?

Here’s an answer I’ve been kicking around: Your system is becoming more neutral whenever you change a system element (component, cable, room treatment, etc.) and you get the following results:

(1) Individual pieces of music sound more unique.
(2) Your music collection sounds more diverse.

This theory occurred to me one day when I changed amps and noticed that the timbres of instruments were suddenly more distinct from one another. With the old amp, all instruments seemed to have a common harmonic element (the signature of the amp?!). With the new amp, individual instrument timbres sounded more unique and the range of instrument timbres sounded more diverse. I went on to notice that whole songs (and even whole albums) sounded more unique, and that my music collection, taken as a whole, sounded more diverse.

That led me to the following idea: If, after changing a system element, (1) individual pieces of music sound more unique, and (2) your music collection sounds more diverse, then your system is contributing less of its own signature to the music. And less signature means more neutral.

Thoughts?

P.S. This is only a way of judging the relative neutrality of a system. Judging the absolute neutrality of a system is a philosophical question for another day.

P.P.S. I don’t believe a system’s signature can be reduced to zero. But it doesn’t follow from that that differences in neutrality do not exist.

P.P.P.S. I’m not suggesting that neutrality is the most important goal in building an audio system, but in my experience, the changes that have resulted in greater neutrality (using the standard above) have also been the changes that resulted in more musical enjoyment.

Bryoncunningham (System | Reviews | Threads | Answers | This Thread)

11-05-09

Responses (251-300 of 396)

Click title to read one, or click date to read all below it.

12-26-09 Hi byron: my point is simple: if you enjoy a stereo system ... Mrtennis

12-26-09 mrtennis - i disagree that the "analysis" of musi ... Bryoncunningham

12-26-09 Bryon, several posts back you raise interesting points by di ... Dgarretson

12-26-09 Bryon - analyzing or not is a personal preference but we dis ... Kijanki

12-27-09 "sounding better and sounding neutral are two completel ... Dgarretson

12-27-09 Neutral is the letting the music on the disc to be fully rea ... Muralman1

12-27-09 Dgarretson- you suggest in your question that neutral is a g ... Kijanki

12-27-09 Muralman1 wrote "better is the listener's subjective no ... Kijanki

12-27-09 Kijanki, my view is that analytic & sterile err at the oppos ... Dgarretson

12-27-09 Dgarretson - absolutely agree. the problem is who is the ju ... Kijanki

12-27-09 Complete neutrality, that is the live performance, cannot be ... Muralman1

12-27-09 Vince, i hope you realize that what sounds neutral to you mi ... Kijanki

12-27-09 Kijanki, let me give you an example. i have a dac that is tu ... Muralman1

12-27-09 Tuned to warmth - that is your preference. i don't care for ... Kijanki

12-27-09 You did not read what i wrote. i said i changed that colored ... Muralman1

12-27-09 Vince, i'm sorry - i read it too quick. Kijanki

12-27-09 There was an iteresting piece in stereophile edited by marku ... Mrtennis

12-27-09 Kijanki, warmth that lacks correct pitch definition is yet o ... Dgarretson

12-27-09 Dgarretson - you're obviously in a "warm" camp wh ... Kijanki

12-28-09 Oops - did i say i want neutral sound? i guess we're all se ... Kijanki

12-28-09 Such descriptions of personal experiences regarding colorati ... Dgarretson

12-28-09 Dgarretson - i also like system a little on the warm side be ... Kijanki

12-28-09 It seems there exists a dichotomy--enjoment of music and ana ... Mrtennis

12-28-09 Dgarretson wrote: i completely agree with this. and: ... Bryoncunningham

12-30-09 Wow - i have been unable to read/post here for a while now d ... Learsfool

12-30-09 Learsfool, as one progressively raises the bar in the hobby ... Dgarretson

12-30-09 learsfool – i agree with this. my view is that, although pe ... Bryoncunningham

12-31-09 Dgarretson, i was speaking more of improvement in listener a ... Learsfool

12-31-09 what is the evidence for this belief? why is the effort to ... Bryoncunningham

01-01-10 Great ideas for a gazlay's sequel. Shadorne

01-05-10 When i began this thread, i advocated a strict kind of objec ... Bryoncunningham

01-07-10 Hi bryon - i have been out of town again for several days, a ... Learsfool

01-08-10 learsfool - i agree with you that audiophiles commonly lose ... Bryoncunningham

01-18-10 After ten weeks or so, this thread has slowed to a halt. in ... Bryoncunningham

01-18-10 Interesting. did you take the blue pill or the red one? Shadorne

01-18-10 I'm sufficiently out of it that i didn't get shadorne's clev ... Almarg

01-18-10 Bryon, your constructs are interesting, and in conclusion t ... Dgarretson

01-18-10 Nice concluding post. it does, however, raise the question ... Cbw723

01-18-10 like bryon, i took the red one. but that blue one can be ... Cbw723

01-18-10 Ultimately, i think most of us do not listen to music in an ... Mrtennis

01-20-10 Hi bryon - just saw your most recent post. very interesting ... Learsfool

01-20-10: Bryoncunningham
Learsfool – Interesting thoughts. As I understand you, you are saying:

(1) An acoustical musical performance is not repeatable, i.e., identical over multiple iterations.
(2) An electronic musical performance is repeatable, i.e., identical over multiple iterations.

I agree with this. From (1) and (2), you conclude that:

(3) An electronic musical performance is more likely to be "truthful" to (i.e. qualitatively resemble) an "original" musical event than an acoustical musical performance is to its "original" event.

I agree with this too, but it does not bear on the claims I made in my last post, because I was not talking about the qualitative resemblance of musical PERFORMANCES, but rather the qualitative resemblance of musical RECORDINGS. You acknowledge this when you say:

Now I realize you are speaking of recordings, not live events, but if the standard for recording is to reproduce the live event as closely as possible, it is clearly much easier to come close to the "truth" of [electronic musical events].

In other words, you are concluding, from (3) above, that:

(4) A RECORDING of an electronic musical event is more likely to be “truthful” to (i.e. qualitatively resemble) an original musical event than a RECORDING of an acoustical musical event is to its original event.

I disagree with this. A recording of an electronic musical event is not inherently more truthful than a recording of an acoustical musical event. However, it may be more difficult to judge the truthfulness of a recording of an electronic musical event, for the reason that we do not have a lifetime of experiences with electronic sounds to compare recordings against, the way we do with voices and acoustical instruments. Hence, recordings of electronic musical events may appear more inherently truthful, because our standards for judging the truthfulness of these recordings are much less exact.

In other words, (4) does not follow from (3), and I believe that (4) is false. I think your reasoning incorrectly collapses the distinction between a REPEATED PERFORMANCE and a RECORDING. Although both can be judged as to their qualitative resemblance to an “original” event, they are of course created differently. A repeated performance is created by instruments (in the case of acoustical music) or devices (in the case of electronic music). A recording is created by a playback system. This obvious fact results in another, somewhat less obvious, fact:

The inherent TRUTHFULNESS of types of music RECORDINGS (acoustical vs. electronic) cannot be validly inferred from the inherent REPEATABILITY of types of music PERFORMANCES.

This is the essence of my reply to the your question. As to your question, first raised by Cbw, about how an audiophile might judge how his system “alters the source material”: First, I believe Cbw was teasing me in good fun by asking that question, because I tried to “sign off” during my last post after contributing at great length, and his question essentially starts the whole conversation over from the beginning, which is funny in a Myth-of-Sisyphus kind of way. Second, I proposed a way for the audiophile to judge how his system “alters the source material” in my original post. That’s what we’ve been talking about this whole time! Perhaps you are asking: How is the audiophile to judge how his system differs from the real events it represents? That is a good question. Perhaps someday, when I recover from this thread, I will create a thread entitled, “How do you judge your system’s transparency?” Because that is essentially the question you are asking. My current answer is: I don’t know.
Bryoncunningham (System | Reviews | Threads | Answers | This Thread)

01-21-10 Hi bryon - good reply. i grant your point that 4) does not ... Learsfool

01-21-10 Learsfool – i believe that you and i are talking about two d ... Bryoncunningham

01-21-10 Hi bryon - to reply to the first part of your post first, i ... Learsfool

01-21-10 Learsfool - i am aware of the extent to which recording, edi ... Bryoncunningham

01-21-10 actually, technically, that's a playback of a performance u ... Cbw723

01-22-10 Cbw and bryon - you both seem to be assuming that a "pe ... Learsfool

01-23-10 the idea that all recordings should be considered performan ... Bryoncunningham

01-23-10 Hi bryon - first, the performance discussion. all music mus ... Learsfool

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