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
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.
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.
I quit EE when in knew from physics that there was a normal distribution around the computations from Ohm's law in the lab.

Are you saying that Ohm's law is wrong, or are you saying that there is tolerance in every measurement?
Just like a scientific instrument our ear's have tolerance from day to day. They are far from perfect.

The propagation of uncertainty is basically thrown out for real world measurements because it is basically insignificant (unless we are doing quantum type things). This level of change is probably less than the dirt on your walls and floor affecting the sound you hear.
Thg, those were two separate ideas expressed in two different sentences. They were not intended to be connected.
Scvan, I think the distribution around the results suggest both measurement error as well as other factors no covered by ohms law. But I also think the are many areas where we don't even have the counterpart of ohm's law.

Basically, I think much measurement is of invalid variables. And I wish more science focused on circuit design to minimize the influence of wires with signal influencing other wires. Lately, I also wish that I understood the influence of magnetic waves on alternating signal in wires.