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
the room acoustics,
is a least as important as a component.
But your thoughts on diversity getting greater with quality increase is brilliant.
Lohanimal, you said, "One of the real problems of neutrality replicating the illusion is that I cannot recall last attending an un-amplified live performance in music, and trust me, I have tried very hard to do this, so I for one and truly denied that point of reference." I agree. Last weekend I sat in on five live performances at THE Show in Newport, CA. All were very enjoyable with Tierney Sutton and Nneena Freelon. All were heavily amplified and too loud, but I was very impressed.

I came home and listened to the same cuts from both singers on their albums. It was quite the equal to being there, especially volume wise, but I was thrilled at the realism.

I really don't think neutrality is our quest, it is realism.
Exactly. The goal is to fool your ears into thinking it's real. Original performance doesn't mean squat.
Csontos, well it is great to be able to hear stellar performances from the past with great realism. I just heard Nnenna Freelon from about ten feet away from her. The performance was heavily amplified, however. She was great, but so was her Live recording with the same songs was also equally outstanding. That is always my goal in 45 years of being an audiophile.
Hey, if you end up replicating the performance, all the better. I think it's everyone's goal whether we know it or not.