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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
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.
scvan
99 posts
 
Neutral is completely hypothetical. It ain't gonna happen.

Absolutely, but the range from neutral is measurable.
mikelavigne
2,144 posts
 
one main way I insure neutrality is that every recording sounds as different as possible, distortion and coloration tend to homogenize things with that veil of sameness. each recording should be distinct.

another method is visiting the jazz club 5 minutes away from my home at the bottom of the hill. they have live jazz every night at 7pm. I can have dinner there, listen to a little jazz, then be home and listening 10 minutes later. I do it about once a month.

then there is comparing different formats in my system particularly the RTR tape. comparing the low gen source tape to the vinyl and digital is always helpful.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Scvan, yes engineering can make things that work with corrections. I quit EE when in knew from physics that there was a normal distribution around the computations from Ohm's law in the lab.

Tubegroover, I have had many instance were reissues of classic recordings sound quite different from earlier originals. Some of this is no doubt the result of magnetic tape deterioration but also the recording engineer has his or her biases.
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