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
Can Albert Porter explain the photography thing for us? I'm sure a lot of people spend big money on cameras too in the name of accuracy stuff like depth of field, sharp focus, correct colors. But why then is that okay, while an expensive stereo is crazy?
Cdc (System | Threads | Answers | This Thread)

Thanks for the email heads up on this thread, I've been totally slammed with both stereo buzz and photo work. I'm happy to have Boy Scouts of America job on Monday, which should be a blast.

As for expensive cameras versus expensive stereo, they do different things (obviously). A photographer is the creator of the image and gets to own the original (highest quality) version of the image captured regardless if it's film or digital.

With stereo we audiophiles are typically last in line, we take what the artists and recording companies offer and hope to recreate that as close to possible to what we hope is an accurate version of the event.

It gets difficult with music since many artists alter the music with effects and then the recording chain alters it again, sometimes even deliberately limiting frequencies, compressing or otherwise making the music "more suitable" for the masses.

With both photography and music there is a hope to capture beauty, emotion and accuracy as best we can. The big limitation with photography is the camera has only one "eye" where we see with two.

At lest in modern recordings we have stereo (or multichannel) which at least attempts to recreate the space and multiple sounds that we experience in real life.

With either it's a very difficult task. We should be grateful to have all the technology we have today. Stereo has never been better and regardless if you prefer Ansel Adams Black and White approach or ultra high resolution digital we at least have a choice.
"A camera has only one eye"

It hasn't always been so, but beyond the novelty of stereo cameras and viewers, it passed and mono prevailed. Interesting that the depth it provided was seen for what it was, yet in audio some folks still think more can be accomplished to enhance our experience of listening to music when it is in stereo.

Like photographers getting all caught up in equipment and its performance, audiophiles get all caught up in equipment and its sound, neither of which have much to do with the creativity of either art form. IMHO.
Not all better tools belong to fools!!! Nuance at some point becomes the goal, finer and finer detail be it musical instrument, brushes, paints, cameras, race boats, race cars etc.... justifiable advancements in the pursuit of one's personal quest of beauty. Necessary? Maybe not but it's enjoyable to use/design fine equipment/pieces etc....
Hi guys - Cdc, Bryon, and Albert, you made some very interesting points, which I agree with as well. Cdc, on the photography issues, yes photographers also have heated debates over the merits of the latest digital technology vs. the older equipment. I have a cousin who is a professional photographer, and he likes to say that most serious photographers only use the digital cameras for going to a location and taking a great many pictures at once. Then they go back, look carefully over them, choose the exact shot they want, and go back to the location and set up their "real" camera, as he calls it. Of course, there are many professionals who have switched over to the all digital stuff and who would vehemently disagree. For myself, I would say that digital photography is FAR ahead of digital audio.
To pick up on something Albert mentions in his post...

The analogy between photography and audio playback, although useful and interesting, has an significant limitation: The analogue to the photographer is NOT the audiophile, but rather the recording engineer. The recording engineer controls how the musical event is represented in the recording, just as the photographer controls how the visual event is represented in the photograph. The audiophile only controls how the RECORDING is represented by his system. That makes the audiophile the analogue of the gallery owner. Yikes!

The serious point is that the audiophile has some role in controlling the representation of the musical event, but a far lesser role, it seems to me, than the photographer has in controlling the representation of a visual event.