How do you judge your system's neutrality?

When you are asked whether you like a particular recording, do you ever say, with great approval, "It was neutral!" Didn't think so. I usually bless favorite recordings with adjectives like "beautiful" or "exciting." The elevation of "neutral" in audiophile discussions is odd.

I have recently been wrestling with this issue and just made what will probably a permanent preamp and DAC change away from "neutrality" to what is admittedly a more colored, but more attractive sound. Very educational for me in establishing my persoal preferences.

Bryon - Thanks for another interesting post.

Bryon, I don't know why your use of the word 'neutrality' bugs me so, but it does and I hope you will forgive my deviation from neutrality and sort of reiterate what I said in my last post.

I have a bit of a challenge for you. How will you know when what you are hearing from a component is true neutrality to the source, or if not, how much it deviates from true neutrality, if not by hearing it thru a collection of components previously assembled by you. Consider that perhaps none of the components previously assembled by you are in fact neutral but just complimentary and happen to meet your expectations of what you think neutrality sounds like, and the new component introduced is just synergistic with these other components.

IMHO, when it is all said and done, if we care at all, we all have systems consisting of complimentary components reproducing our software in a manner in which we believe it was originally set down, or, god forbid, a manner in which we found great pleasure. There is no evil in using colored components, especially if you conclude as I think you must, that there is no such thing as an uncolored component. Its just a matter of degrees and sensitivities. Recall that my 'god' is resolution, something far more achievable and observable.

You asked how I could question your views on neutrality in a post subsequent to my last post. I hope you have now, after reading this and rereading my previous post(s) come to an understanding of what I disagree with you about and why.

How will you know when what you are hearing from a component is true neutrality to the source

Good question.

They have the same problem in pro audio. Sound engineers are constantly concerned with how the mix translates to other (often inferior) systems like cars and radio.

Here is a suggestion: If you want to hear Telarc recordings as close to how they intended (as neutral as possible) then you can find out what gear they use and use the same. It still won't be totally neutral unless you acoustically treat your listening environment to a high standard but at least you will be closer to hearing what they hear and what they intended you to hear or as "neutral" as possible...

Jult52 wrote:
"When you are asked whether you like a particular recording, do you ever say, with great approval, 'It was neutral!' Didn't think so."

I agree with this, as I said in an earlier post. Again, neutrality is not a virtue of music or of recording. It is a virtue of a playback system.

Newbee wrote:
"Consider that perhaps none of the components previously assembled by you are in fact neutral but just complimentary and happen to meet your expectations of what you think neutrality sounds like, and the new component introduced is just synergistic with these other components."

I have considered this. In fact, it is the motivation for the title of this thread, "How do you judge your system's neutrality?" In my original post, I proposed one possible way of judging a system's neutrality.

Newbee wrote:
"I have a bit of a challenge for you. How will you know when what you are hearing from a component is true neutrality to the source, or if not, how much it deviates from true neutrality, if not by hearing it thru a collection of components previously assembled by you."

It is, of course, impossible to hear a component individually. We can only hear it in the context of a system. Because of this inescapable fact, there is always a potential fallacy when we hear a characteristic of an audio system and then attribute that characteristic to an individual component. A system might sound bright. Is it the speakers? Is it the cd player? Is it an impedance matching issue? If we get this wrong, we’ve made the Fallacy of Division, i.e., the misattribution of a system characteristic to one of the system’s components. But the danger of making this mistake does not mean we shouldn’t try to understand a system in terms of the contribution of its components.

As audiophiles, we are constantly confronted with situations that require us to make educated guesses about how to attribute system characteristics to individual components. Sometimes we get it wrong. Sometimes the system characteristic cannot be reduced to a single component, but only to the interaction of two (or more) components. But we have no choice but to try understand the contribution of each system element. That is an implicit assumption every time we upgrade a component. In our efforts to improve a system’s performance, we try to identify which component is the weak link and replace it with a stronger one. Because of this, the attempt to reduce system characteristics to component characteristics is unavoidable. It is fallible. But it is what we have.

Newbee wrote:
"You asked how I could question your views on neutrality in a post subsequent to my last post."

Newbee - My questions in response to you last post were not designed to ask how you could question my views on neutrality. I am happy for you to question my views on neutrality. That is the fun of these threads! My questions were just a rhetorical device, in an attempt to make the point that neutrality is not an all or nothing thing. If I gave the impression that I am not open to you questioning my point of view, I apologize. I have been enjoying this thread a great deal, precisely because we don't all agree with each other.

Bryon, you say that 'neutrality is not an all or nothing thing'. We disagree!

At the risk of being redundant, neutrality is the end result of combining many components of sound, including absolute resolution and perfect frequency response. Rather than refer to 'neutrality' I think it is more productive to refer to its components, if for no other reason than it helps folks achieve their goals. Using the term neutrality as a goal is, for me, no different that using the phrase absolute sound, i.e. live music (thanks to Harry Pearson). It is unachievable and serves no really worthwhile purpose other than to put consumers on an endless (and expensive) pursuit (goal) of the achieving the impossible.

It works well for folks with commercial interests though. Nothing better in fact. How would you ever be able to sell stuff without having pretention to moving one closer to the goal of live sounds or neutrality. And, somehow, I sense from a lot of posts in these pages that folks who don't buy into these goals as having great value to them are gently (or not so by some self absorbed, self proclaimed sound experts) treated as audio's leapers.

Someone mentioned in this or another post that in his pursuit of some form of audio perfection he had lost his ability to just get involved with and enjoy the music as he had experienced in the past with lesser equipment and different interests. His experience is not unique. In fact there is a long lived thread "How do I get off this carousel" or something like that. Many folks, myself included, have at some point, become so absorbed with counting the trees we can no longer see the forest. When we sit down in the listening chair we are more focused on the 'sounds' and get sucked into questioned ourselves about how we could improve the sound, i.e. how can I get better depth of image, how can I get a higher image, how can I get better bass, ad infinitum. At one point I realized I was so sbsorbed when I found I was actually enjoying the MUSIC more when I was listening to it from a nearby room (my office) and couldn't hear all of those highly prised 'audiophile' attributes such as imaging etc.

Anyway, that's what I really think, I think.