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
Shadrone, You are right. I put 4 of those little blue pills adjacent to some EL84's. After the amp warmed up it sounded like an octet of KT90's. Wonder what a picture of Penelope Cruz would do................Sure would keep my hand out of the blue pill jar!
Dgarretson - I have a better understanding of the approach you are proposing. It's a very interesting idea. I have another question about it. You wrote:

The propagation of a desirable coloration is necessarily accompanied by the propagation of undesirable coloration.

I think you are probably right, but how do we know this?
As long as your are pointing a finger at transgressors to good sound, I have my own findings, and the difficulty in changing them was relatively easy.

On my system, I have found the following:

Concealment:- Solid state amplifiers - easy

Corruption -cables - easy

elimination - oversampling DACs - easy.
The distinction between "easy," "difficult," and "impossible" degrees of recoverability was really just a shorthand way of talking about how much the system would have to change in order to recover the missing information.

In the case of concealment, relatively SMALL changes to the system, such as repositioning the speakers, can recover the concealed information. Hence the word 'EASY.'

In the case of corruption, LARGER changes to the system, such as modifying or changing components, are necessary to recover the corrupted information. Hence the word 'DIFFICULT.'

In the case of elimination, NO changes to the system, other than changing formats, will recover the eliminated information. Hence the word 'IMPOSSIBLE.'