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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
blindjim
3,092 posts
 

Audioengr

you had me worried there for a minute... I thought my preamp wasn't any good and I needed a better one, quick.

Thankfully as you alluded, each source thru mine sounds OK, good, better, or best, as the case maybe.... yet any source once attached is improved noticeably.

I'll settle for that 'standard'.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,428 posts
 
Audioengr - Most of recordings have some form of compression and some are really bad. Wouldn't they sound better with an amp that expands dynamics (instead of being neutral). What about soundstaging? Is deeper and wider better than more accurate positioning. Could it be too deep or too wide? How do we know what studio intended?

Warm tube amps sound wonderful on guitar or voice bot not so good on instruments with complex harmonic structure like percussion or piano? What if I don't listen to piano?

One can measure identical frequency response of two components with very different sound (tube vs. SS). What you compare it to. How do you measure it. In my opinion measurements can offer some clues but I would not use them to buy a system. If I cannot trust measurements then it comes to my or other people opinion - and that is highly subjective. It might depend on many factors including age. Would "neutral" system sound the same to young Hindu and old Latino?

I'm not even sure if being neutral is a virtue. What if system has its own wonderful personality. What's wrong with that? Are we trying to find best tasting or most neutral wine?
cbw723
89 posts
 
Kijanki writes:
"Would "neutral" system sound the same to young Hindu and old Latino?"

No, it would sound different to every person that listened to it, but that's not the point. The point is whether or not it recreates their version of reality, and only a neutral system could do that for everyone. If each person listens to a guitar, each person hears something different. But if the goal is to make a recording sound, as much as possible, like the source, neutrality seems important in achieving it.

"Are we trying to find best tasting or most neutral wine?"

In our case, "wine" is the music, and our systems are the glass you drink it from. Do you want a glass that flavors all of your wine?
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kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,428 posts
 
"But if the goal is to make a recording sound, as much as possible, like the source, neutrality seems important in achieving it."

No - Neutrality does not achieve that because the goal of recording is to sound good on average cheap system or boom-box hence introduced compression.

Grand piano has dynamics reaching 96dB but is never recorded like that because most of people wouldn't be able to hear it and would complain about buzzing speakers.

Guitar sound, that you mentioned, is defined by Presence, Projection, Separation, Sustain and Tone. All of it can be manipulated in (sonically dead) studio. It has nothing to do with absolute objective reality but more with the way recording guy sees it. This reality can vary so much from one recording engineer to another that some classical guitarists like Julian Bream come to studio, wherever they record, with their own recording engineer.

Well - I'm my own playback engineer and I choose the sound I like.
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