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 (301-350 of 401)

...measuring the accuracy of individual components is probably near impossible, because accuracy is a multi-dimensional concept. how can you be sure you have measured every relevant variable.

Mrtennis - I agree with you that accuracy is a "multi-dimensional concept," in the sense that it refers to a number of variables, rather than a single variable. But I do not conclude from this that accuracy is impossible to assess. Consider the analogy with telescopes again...

A telescope's optics can suffer from various kinds of distortion, including spherical distortion, astigmatic distortion, and chromatic distortion. Hence the accuracy of a telescope is multi-dimensional, just like the accuracy of an audio component. The multi-dimensional nature of a telescope's accuracy makes it more difficult to assess, but not impossible. Similarly, the multi-dimensional nature of an audio component's accuracy makes it somewhat difficult to assess, but not impossible.

Having said that, I agree with you that the common measurements of an audio component's accuracy, like those that routinely appear in Stereophile, are unlikely to be exhaustive. In other words, there are probably some unknown variables that are relevant to the assessment of a component's accuracy. But even the likely presence of unknown variables doesn't vitiate the concept of accuracy in audio. It merely makes judgments about accuracy FALLIBLE. But that shouldn't be news to anyone.

also, if each component in a stereo system were accurate, does that imply that the stereo system is accurate?

IMO, yes. Assuming that you include the listening room as part of the assessment of a system's accuracy, and acknowledging that what inaccuracies do exist in the various components may interact in non-linear or unpredictable ways.

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

04-08-11 I admit that you can measure frequency response of a stereo ... Mrtennis

04-11-11 as you no doubt know, there are many other measurements rel ... Bryoncunningham

05-11-11 roysen – if you look at the posts on this thread, especiall ... Bryoncunningham

05-11-11 Bryoncunningham, when you are assessing whether component x ... Tbg

05-12-11 in light of this, i hope you will understand if i decline t ... Bryoncunningham

05-12-11 Bryoncunningham, i agree. Tbg

05-12-11 A contribution to the topic of neutrality was posted on the ... Bryoncunningham

05-12-11 Since all components are imperfect, a thorough audition will ... Mrtennis

< Prev

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

Next >