How do you judge your system's neutrality?

Cbw (& Byron), I have never taken any exception to the point that as you remove distortion artifacts from your system the more easily you will hear all of the information in the pits and grooves. Byron has discovered this as he has improved the quality of the stuff in his room he has been appreciating the differences and his ability to discern them. Removing distortion enhances the sense of resolution.

Assuming that the collective manufacturers had the ability to make distortion free equipment and audiophiles exhausted all of the possibles in system/room set up, one could clearly state that he had a truly "Neutral" system. A perfect world. You would only need one set of speakers, one amp, one source, varing only by the nature of the acoustic. You could do this with a computer I think. Life would be so easy.

But in my view 'neutrality' really doesn't and cannot exist because it is a term like life or death, neutrality is an absolute thing. There is no room for equivication. It is either neutral or it isn't. Like being pregnant! No halfway measures.

But we can talk about distortion in its many forms in the various components, acoustic venues, and equipment set up, which influence our hearing experience. When I go to a symphony I want to sit in the center of the main floor about 6 to 10 rows back in most classic halls. I get loads of detail, imaging, and dynamic's. You've got to sit there an listen to Mahler! This is the sound, tonally speaking, I want in my home. Is it neutral? Compared to what. Sitting in the lower balcony? Sitting in the upper balconies or the back of the main floor. No it is not more neutral, it is different and it is live, i.e. real.

Apart from getting all of the resolution you can get from assembling components and setting up you system in your room there isn't much you can do to establish a system that is really neutral. The sound you hear is still the collective sound of all of the components, speakers, and room acoustics. What makes you assess the resulting sound as neutral is nothing more that the free use of your imagination. I would suggest that 'natural' would be a move achievable goal in the real world.

FWIW.

Learsfool wrote:
"You posted that you want to hear as close as possible to what is heard in the recording studio. My point about the actual recording studios is that you would NEVER want to do this. Recording studios are not designed for listening to music - they are extremely dead, with none of the reverberance or other positive sound characteristics of an actual live music venue."

Yes, I am aware that recording studios are extremely dead, having spent some time in them (not as the artist, but as the recording engineer. No, I do not do this for a living).

My point was not that I want to hear what it sounded like in the acoustically dead studio recording room with the musician. Nor do I want to hear what it sounded like in the control booth, recording that musician. I want to hear what it sounded like in the mastering stage/suite/room, when the music is fully mixed (i.e., level adjusted, channel placed, EQ'd, reverbed, etc.).

I know that, often, the artists themselves have little say over what they sound like (hence my joke about the studio executive's child having "notes" for the recording engineer). This is true of rock and pop music more than any other genre, but I have no doubt that similarly depressing realities affect many other types of recordings. But these facts about the recording industry do not mean we cannot strive to build an audio system that faithfully reproduces, to the extent that is possible, what was heard IN THE FINAL MIX.

Newbee wrote:
"But in my view 'neutrality' really doesn't and cannot exist because it is a term like life or death, neutrality is an absolute thing. There is no room for equivication. It is either neutral or it isn't. Like being pregnant! No halfway measures."

I have a hard time understanding this point of view. 'Neutrality,' in the way we've been discussing it, is a way of talking about freedom from coloration. Is that really an all or nothing thing? Can we not agree that, however different our systems may sound from one another, they are all less colored than a boombox? And isn't admitting those kinds of comparisons an acknowledgement that neutrality is a matter of degree? I believe that neutrality is a continuum, like virtually ever other measure of quality in audio, whether objective or subjective.

Tvad - Thank you for welcoming me. This is, indeed, the first thread I have created, though I have been lurking on Audiogon for some time. I've read many of your posts, and always found them informative.