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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

Showing 5 responses by scvan

scvan
99 posts
 
Fast cables? Signals travel at near the speed of light. I don't know how much faster cables can be.

Also dielectrics at low frequency is marketing mumbo jumbo from cable manufacturers. It can be measured in capacitance which is incredibly small on short runs and at low frequencies (audible frequencies).

In a typical PVC 1000ft wire the dielectric will slow a signal down 2 microseconds so in a 10 ft wire that would be 0.02 microseconds. That is a potential blurring of the frequency 0.00000002Hz. That calculation is at RF, not audible. It is even less at lower frequencies. If anyone can honestly say they hear that, please step forward because I suspect you will be able to make some serious cash being a scientific tool.

The above calculations come from:
http://www.nationalwire.com/support_basicintro.asp

National Wire is a company that quotes resources for their information on the bottom of their web page and probably has many more engineers working for it than any audio cable company.
scvan
99 posts
 
You are right. The page I listed was only referring to RF signals. They are not AC...

Gold is a slightly worse conductor than copper. It is only used because it doesn't corrode as easily as copper.

Silver is slightly better than copper, and if you could afford it a 100% silver stranded would be a better cable than what you are probably using. You may not like the sound but it would do a better job of not messing with the signal.

We can launch a machine into space, have it travel 317 million miles and land on an object 2 miles wide, but we can't understand a 10 foot cable?

There is not enough honest skepticism in hi-fi. We believe what paid of journalist tell us and listen to claims from people that are hawking products to us that will only improve their pocket book.
scvan
99 posts
 
Neutral is completely hypothetical. It ain't gonna happen.

Absolutely, but the range from neutral is measurable.
scvan
99 posts
 
I quit EE when in knew from physics that there was a normal distribution around the computations from Ohm's law in the lab.

Are you saying that Ohm's law is wrong, or are you saying that there is tolerance in every measurement?
Just like a scientific instrument our ear's have tolerance from day to day. They are far from perfect.

The propagation of uncertainty is basically thrown out for real world measurements because it is basically insignificant (unless we are doing quantum type things). This level of change is probably less than the dirt on your walls and floor affecting the sound you hear.
scvan
99 posts
 
Who knows what hi-fi/ audiophile mean anymore. There are some crazy claims out there.

Ideally speakers would have superflat response curves from 20-20k, electronics would have no distortion and the noise floor would be at -infinity. That would be a perfect "system", however many things fall into play here.

No passive speaker is perfectly flat. No one's hearing is perfect. No electronics are distortion free. Of course a little bit of "issues" hear and there do not take away from enjoyment for most of us necessarily.

I view modern hi-fi to almost the point of being like ice cream, everyone has their preferred flavor, and there is no best flavor. I feel most audiophiles are not going for a perfect replication of the original signal, instead they are going for their preferred flavor. I imagine if a perfect replication were built many people would prefer more colored solutions. It is human nature, we all have preferences and like different flavors.

A good example is the MM vs MC discussion. If you just look at the SNR of those two options, you would see that MC is much worse. I believe the SNR of MC is similar to a 9 bit recording and MM is 11 bit. If you were given an option to buy a digital player than was 9 bit or 11 bit you wouldn't buy either because they stink, but many people are buying TT's and vinyl. Personally I really like the sound of my MC and it maybe because that high noise floor is like a warm blanket, but whatever it is it is not accurate.

Having said that, there still is a nice engineering pursuit that will never be satisfied in making that perfect "system". The engineering is probably already there that is much more accurate than our ears can detect and better than anyone needs but we all like a little different spice in our food.
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