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)

Musicians consider all recordings to be performances. The difference between a live and a recorded performance is that the recorded performance is permanent, and a live performance is not.

The idea that all recordings should be considered performances is strange to me. It is not merely the fact that some electronic music involves no real instruments. It is the fact that much electronic music is never PLAYED IN REAL TIME. It is ASSEMBLED OVER MANY HOURS OR DAYS in a computer software program. I have personally worked with electronic composers who create recordings this way. To call their work a “performance” seems to stretch the limits of any ordinary use of the term. However, since you are a professional musician and I am not, I will defer to you that musicians consider all recordings to be performances. Having said that, this disagreement is quite tangential to the main issue of my post on 1/18, which is the source of our current disagreement. So, to return to that…

This brings me to "truthfulness" vs. "transparency." Bryon, you seem to equate these two things, and this is where the confusion lies.

This is almost correct. In my post on 1/18, I did not EQUATE transparency and truthfulness, but I did propose that we think of transparency as a KIND of truthfulness. Specifically, I proposed that we think of transparency as...

…how much the information presented at the ear during playback resembles the information that was presented at the microphone during the actual performance.

It does not matter whether we disagree about this conceptualization of transparency. “Transparency” is simply the term I chose, following Almarg’s suggestion, to refer to the CORRESPONDENCE between…

(1) The information presented at the ear during playback, and
(2) The information presented at the microphone during the performance.

I have called the correspondence between (1) and (2) "transparency." But you can call it anything you like. The important thing is not the term, but what I have used the term to mean, namely, the correspondence between (1) and (2). That correspondence is a KIND OF TRUTHFULNESS, which I will now try to show again...

Since (1) refers to a REPRESENTATION of an event and (2) refers to the REAL EVENT that it represents, then “transparency,” as I am using the term, refers to the CORRESPONDENCE of a REPRESENTATION to a REAL EVENT. And the correspondence between a representation and a real event is the MEANING of truthfulness. Hence transparency, in the sense of the correspondence between (1) and (2) above, is a KIND OF truthfulness (but not the only kind, since music recordings are not the only kind of representations).

I think your continuum IS correct IF you are speaking of transparency, not truthfulness. In my view, a recording can be very transparent yet not truthful…

You are either using a different meaning of “transparent” or a different meaning of “truthful” than the meanings I used in my post on 1/18, and in all my posts since, including this one. I suspect that you are using the term “transparent” differently. I do not want to squabble over the use of the term. If you object to my usage, you can substitute whatever word you like whenever I use the term, so long as you understand your substitute as referring to the correspondence between (1) and (2) above.

Only if one has familiarity with the performers and the venue can one accurately judge the truthfulness of a recording…I am able to apply this objectivist perspective in this way because I am VERY familiar with the hall and my colleagues. If one is not familiar with these things, then all one can do is guess at the truthfulness of the recording - you can only know approximately…

I completely agree with this. What you are describing here, however, is not WHAT MAKES a representation/recording truthful, but rather HOW YOU JUDGE whether a representation/recording is truthful. In my post on 1/18, I was proposing ideas about WHAT MAKES a representation/recording truthful, namely, its correspondence to the real event. I was not proposing ideas about HOW YOU JUDGE whether a representation/recording is truthful.

If one is not familiar with these things, then all one can do is guess at the truthfulness of the recording - you can only know approximately…Therefore you would really be applying a subjectivist, not an objectivist perspective, because you don't really know what the live event sounded like. You would have to use your own personal reference point for how you think it is supposed to sound.

I agree with this as well. If you do not know what real performance sounded like, then you are far less well equipped to evaluate a recording of it in terms of its objective correspondence to the real event, simply because you don’t know what the real event sounded like. In that case, you would be left to evaluate the recording in terms of preference, which is most certainly subjective.

But none of this seems to me to be inconsistent with my proposals on 1/18 or my defense of them since. Here are the proposals you objected to:

(5a) The more a music recording represents a REAL musical event, the MORE it can be judged as to its truthfulness.

(5b) The more a music recording represents a VIRTUAL musical event, the LESS it can be judged as to its truthfulness.

(6a) Music recordings of REAL events can be evaluated as to their truthfulness. And to evaluate a recording’s truthfulness is to adopt the point of view of Objectivism.

(6b) Music recordings of VIRTUAL events cannot be evaluated as to their truthfulness, though they can be evaluated in terms of preference. And to evaluate a recording in terms of preference is to adopt the point of view of Subjectivism.

(5a) is intended to describe a NECESSARY condition for judging the truthfulness of a recording, namely the recording must represent a “real-ish” event. (5a) is NOT intended to describe SUFFICIENT conditions for judging the truthfulness of a recording. As you point out, (5a) is not a sufficient condition for judging the truthfulness of a recording, since there is at least one other necessary condition: familiarity with the real event the recording represents.

(5b) is simply the converse of (5a)

(6a) is partly a restatement of (5a), and partly intended to point out that Objectivism – the view that a representation can be evaluated as to its truthfulness – is more warranted when recordings represent real events, simply because the truthfulness of a representation REQUIRES that there be a real event for the representation to correspond to. That is the MEANING of truth. And this is not an idiosyncratic definition of truth. If I defer to you, as a professional musician, about the meaning of “performance” as used by musicians, please believe me, as a professionally trained philosopher, that truth is used by philosophers and scientists alike to mean “correspondence to reality.” And if you will grant me that, then it is a short step to the conclusion that a necessary condition for judging the truthfulness of a representation (whether it is a recording, or any representation) is that there is or was a real event that the representation represents. In light of this, judging the truthfulness of a recording is an act of Objectivism BY DEFINITION, since Objectivism is the view that representations can be evaluated as to their truthfulness.

(6b) is simply the converse of (6a).

I can assure you that the more mikes used, and the more mixing done (in other words the more virtual the recording), the easier it is to hear where the recording falls short of the live event as far as truthfulness is concerned. I am able to apply this objectivist perspective in this way because I am VERY familiar with the hall and my colleagues.

Once again, you are providing ideas (good ones, I think) about HOW TO JUDGE the truthfulness of a recording. I agree with these ideas, but they do not mean I’ve gotten things backwards in (5a) and (5b), or in (6a) and (6b). It only means that the perception of the “virtuality” of a recording make it possible to JUDGE the truthfulness of the recording. In other words, one way to judge the truthfulness of a recording is when it DEVIATES FROM truthfulness. The perception of virtuality in a recording is, in effect, the perception of CONTRAST between the recording and the real event. But for some recordings, there is no real event. When recordings are altered liberally during editing and mixing, they can become so virtual that there is no longer any real event for the recording to correspond to. And if there is no real event for the recording to correspond to, then the recording cannot be judged in terms of its truthfulness, since truthfulness MEANS correspondence to a real event. And if a recording cannot be judged in terms of its truthfulness, then we are left with evaluating it subjectively. Hence the more virtual a recording, the more the attitude of Subjectivism is warranted.
Bryoncunningham (System | Reviews | Threads | Answers | This Thread)

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

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