How do you judge your system's neutrality?

Newbee: This thread has been a valuable learning experience for a lot of folks IMHO.

Dgarretson: This thread evidenced clear articulation of at least several new constructs. It was a refreshing change from the repetitiveness of many subjects posted to forum. The vocabulary of audio was expanded a bit, and perhaps as a result, some will think about about their systems and biases more clearly than before.

I second these thoughts, and share these feelings in my own case. I want to particularly thank Bryon, Learsfool, Dgarretson, and Cbw723 for what I consider to be an exceptionally high caliber, intellectually stimulating, and thought provoking thread.

A goodly number of years ago, when I was a first year law student taking a course in contracts (I have a law degree although my career and other degrees were in electrical engineering), the professor posed some question to the class. During the next hour or so a lot of students took turns proposing answers, each of which he then methodically, in Socratic style, tore to shreds with questions that revealed fallacies in the answers.

As this went on there was an increasing feeling of actual suspense among many of us wondering what on earth the answer could possibly be, with just about every conceivable answer having been reduced to rubble. Then, abruptly and anti-climactically, he declared that we had pretty much covered that subject, and went on to something else.

I later came to understand that there was no one correct answer, and the point was to improve the thinking skills that are brought into play when dealing with issues that are subtle and ambiguous.

That seems relevant here as well.

Best regards,
-- Al

Hi Bryon - nice posts! Your second interpretation of the "reification" comment is the one meant - it is specifically in reference to the concept of "neutrality." However, I don't think it has necessarily to do with your definition by absence, as you assumed. To grossly summarize, our position would be that although colorations exist, this does not mean that neutrality does. We don't believe that there could ever be a piece of audio equipment, let alone an entire system, that has no coloration, meaning therefore that "neutrality" is an abstract concept, not something that has or could have real material existence.

As far as the validity/reliability, this is actually what was the more interesting/important part of all of this to him. To me, it is not so much the validity but the reliability of the operationalization as a whole that is definitely in question. The validity may or may not be, depending on what specific measures we happen to be speaking of (for various different types of colorations, for example - would we really be measuring what we are trying to or not). I hope this makes sense?

The taste/quality thing is complex. Taste and quality are often confused, as it is hard to separate the two sometimes. In the context of his paper I mentioned, audio is not involved; that was a discussion of music criticism (critics being the arbiters of taste), and the perceived meaning and value of musical works, and it looks at critics who failed to see the value of works at their premieres which are now considered masterpieces, and discusses the sociology of it all. It is very entertaining.

However, taste vs. quality is also applicable to our discussion here. One's taste is going to have a huge influence on how one perceives the quality of a component, for instance. Also on whether something is a coloration or not, the degree of coloration, etc. You said yourself in your second post of today "what is 'valuable' is in the eye of the beholder." One could also easily say that what is a "coloration" is in the ear of the listener.

One possibility is that, according to some posters, this thread is "philosophical" and "academic."

This is the part I find most puzzling. I realize that there is a certain anti-intellectualism running rampant in certain circles in the US these days, but I'm surprised to find it in the audiophile world of high-end music, aesthetic appreciation, and outrageously expensive equipment with no other purpose than personal enjoyment. All of which activities are, in a word, elitist. Leaving aside what historically happens in countries that let anti-intellectual demagoguery gain political sway, it would be hard to find a country that has benefited more from academic exercise than this one. From our wealthy, intellectual, elitist founding fathers dabbling in political philosophy and coming up with the Constitution, to a bunch of egghead scientists who for decades pondered quantum mechanical weirdness that had no practical use... until it did, to people like Nelson Pass sitting around trying to figure out which transistor "sounds better," we are the daily beneficiaries of activities that were, or are, largely academic. And that says nothing of the value of purely academic ideas in educating the minds of all the millions of people who, by learning to think rigorously, went on to do something "practical."

Personally, I have found this thread enormously valuable. I have had to think, in detail, about a number of concepts that I only had a vague notion of before, which has helped clarify my thinking and improved my understanding of the role of these concepts (and their interrelationship) in the audio chain. And by discussing them and holding them up to scrutiny, I feel I better understand their limitations.

As for practical use, the thread started with a practical suggestion, and others have been made as the discussion progressed. My own conception of neutrality in terms of entropy (which is probably not original, but I don't know otherwise), has the potential to be a usable technique. Entropy, as discussed, is an actual, measurable quality of information. Were it to be measurable to a degree that would allow the detection of playback colorations (and I think it probably is), and were it to be correlated with listener experience (and I think it could be), it could become a quantity that was reported alongside other component measurements, like THD, channel separation, frequency response, etc., to help people choose the best component for their needs.

Tvad:

This discussion is analogous to juggling water.

Where audiophiles are concerned the analogies that come to my mind have more to do with bringing horses to water, and herding cats. As Bryon points out, there are seventy eight thousand threads on this site alone. Is this one really so dangerous and disruptive?

To whip the horse's eyes with one more water analogy, "You can bring a horticulture but you can't make her think."

Too much abstraction, Dorothy Parker?

Learsfool says:

To grossly summarize, our position would be that although colorations exist, this does not mean that neutrality does. We don't believe that there could ever be a piece of audio equipment, let alone an entire system, that has no coloration, meaning therefore that "neutrality" is an abstract concept, not something that has or could have real material existence.

By this argument, you also believe that pressure exists but vacuum does not because nobody has (or ever will) make one. So all these threads discussing "vacuum tubes" should really be corrected to be about "very low pressure tubes." Good luck with that.