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
You can record the sound over the air with a two channel pro recorded like Nagra and then replay the rerording in your system. Then compare to the original recording. This should help reveal any colorations and distortions if the recording is good and high quality. I think I read this in a magazine once, but never tried it. A person used this to proove to some teenage kids that his high end system was indeed superior to thier cheap stereo and had every bit as much bass. Thier cheap stereo was just distored and skewed towards lots of bass. He recorded the kids stero and then played back the recording on his system. The kids were astonished at how much it then sounded like there system.
Bryoncunningham , You say, "Or my post from yesterday...

People should choose components according to their own preferences, not someone else's.

That is another straw man."

I must admit it is beyond my comprehension what you are saying here, but as we agreed on the other thread, I am dropping this discussion.