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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
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.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Scvan, I am talking about what you hear. Some cables have a sharp leading edge and some smear the sound. I always suspect the dielectric materials. We are speaking here of ac signal not constant conduction. If you don't hear how smeared gold wires in speaker wires make the sound, we have little to discuss.
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.
tubegroover
2,320 posts
 
"If a system is completely neutral it will sound exactly like the real event. I don't think this will ever happen."

I disagree. A recording will only capture what the mics recorded, not necessarily the real event. It really depends on the hearing acuity of the engineer and mic placement. Even then it may just represent the biases of the engineer. There are too many variables regarding taste and listening preferences to assess what is or isn't right or "neutral".

So far as an audio system goes, I agree with the premis of the OP, that a neutral system will reproduce for good or bad all the artifacts of the recording and it will be like a chmeoleon in distinguishing the differences so that it will not have necessarily showcase a specific character or color. Of course this is an ideal, at least for some, that will never be agreed upon by all. Some like specific colorations that make music sound the way they want it too. None of us are imune to our own particular biases so it will always remain a perplexing enigma. It really is all about taste regardless of how we pine on neutrality.
rja's avatar
rja
2,356 posts
 
Neutral is completely hypothetical. It ain't gonna happen.
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