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
"I am actually somewhat agnostic." - don't worry, there is a cream for that.
So, for the fourth time: In my view, neutrality is one virtue AMONG MANY in an audio system. My intention in starting this thread was to propose a way to develop that particular virtue, not to suggest that it is the virtue to be valued above all others.

Well, after 61 posts so far in this thread, I'll throw in my own brief $0.02. Upon careful reading and re-reading of Byron's well written initial post, it seems to me that it makes perfect sense, and that it proposes an evaluation criterion that will often be useful.

It seems obvious to me that there will be a significant DEGREE of correlation (although certainly not a perfect correlation) between colorations/lack of transparency/lack of neutrality/whatever you want to call it, that may be introduced by a component or system, and the degree of enjoyment that system will provide to the average discriminating listener when averaged across a wide range of recordings. An inverse partial correlation, to be perfectly precise.

Byron has proposed a means of facilitating assessment of that coloration/lack of transparency/lack of neutrality/whatever you want to call it that, while perhaps not commonly recognized, seems to me to be both valuable and self-evident on its face. It's as simple as that.

Regards,
-- Al
Kijanki wrote: "no I would not adjust sound for individual songs but rather pick affordable system that sounds best to me on average with the type of music I listen to."

Affordable? What does affordable have to do with anything? I thought this was an audiophile discussion.
Cbw723 - Don't you have any financial limitations?

If not, I can recommend an amp (Stereophile class A few years ago) that costs $350k - perfect sound, no compromises there. For the rest of us it is always choice between many factors. Many audiophilles give up extension to get better transparency or imaging etc.

I assume of course that we're talking seriously and not about "imaginary gear"
I've been doing critical listening lately from 12-24" away. You can hear a lot more hash and detail from the driver than the normal 6-10 feet. Cuts out room interactions too.
I don't know why but listening farther away smooths out the sound and also removes a lot of micro-detail.