neutrality vs. realism

I believe that neutrality and realism are one in the same when it comes to the goals of audio components and the reproduction of music. However, many (maybe all) companies that use such adjectives to describe their equipment do so only for marketing purposes. Understandably, they're in business to make a profit. Some manufacturers, such as Levinson/Madrigal, produce equipment that is lifeless and unemotional, painting a "two dimensional" picture and robbing the music of microdynamics and pace. The audiophile press has praised the "neutrality" and "accuracy" of such gear. Others companies, like Krell, tout "authenticity" and "realism," but have a highly polished, chrome plated, "larger than life" sound that is great for a brief audition and a quick sale but eventually proves to be too bright, too brash and fatiguing. Many users and purveyors of tubed gear assert a claim of "musicality," which I gather is supposed to a higher plane of both neutrality and realism. Unfortunately, tubed gear often produces a warm, euphonic and overly romantic sound that exaggerates the midband and smears the timing of music. I'm sure others will disagree with or be insulted by my opinions and examples, but ultimately, it comes down to what flavor of coloration you prefer.

i will try to add to this post as best i can. please disagree at will if you need to, i don't mind, i can always learn something as far as i am concerned
i have come to believe that if you want real music you should make a habit of attending live concerts.
however, how many of us can afford this habit, in terms of time and $$$, as often as we would like is another matter altogether. i cannot
thus we search for the means to reproduce the event in our homes, and can do so with surprising results given the tech and artistry in high-end equipment today.
i think many of us approach this hobby with something of a straight line postulate. we believe we know what 'musicality' is as a function of hi-fi equipment, though specs cannot necessarily prove it, we believe this musicality exists and we search for it under the assumption that with the right gear we can create a musical truth that satisfies our notion of what we expect in the absence of the actual musicians and venue.
personally i know when it comes to gear in my home that i do not want that truth of associated with say levinson amps. in a conversation i had recently someone described levinson gear to be extremely satisfying and well-engineered, but in the long run it is the world's best vanilla ice cream in a very expensive white bowl. some people will love this and such neutrality will be part of what they expect or believe their hi-fi experience should be.
i on the other hand have recently found that cary amps have moved me much closer to the musicality that i am searching for in music reproduction. the cary amps are anything but as neutral as say levinson or spectral, but long term whatever the coloration or warmth there is designed into dennis's amps is something that i believe i will very happily live with.
this hobby is not much different from an arbitrary, though purposeful and useful, axiomatic system.
not all of us will agree on what 'straight' is and our ideas of reproduced music will vary as do geometries.
this is what i love about this hobby

oh yeah, the search for musicality also allows us to indulge the obsessive compulsive aspects of our personalities without doing much harm except to our wallets
gotta love that

if what ive said has been said before, im not surprised, i imagine i have read similar posts in the past
i tried to contribute and keep this thread alive

The listening room has more to do with realism then most equipment.Measurements are good but those measurements are done in a whole different enviroment then ones listening room.
To get the most of ones equipment and ultimately the sound of realism you must adress the home listening room and set up.A reference system with great measurement set up improperly well sound high end and not at all realistic.
This hobby to me is about how realistic I can get my rig to sound.There are so many ways to achieve realistic sound it takes years of tweaking to truely acheive this goal.
Synergy between ones equipment like stated earlier is second to acheiving realistic sound in YOUR listening room.

I think this thread might better be called Neutrality vs. Musicality.

However, before I start, I must reiterate a tirade that I get into everytime folks start talking about realism. We must always remember that on every recording we play on our wonderful hi end systems we are listening not only to the chain of components in out hi end systems but also to:
1 - The artists playing the music/singing (of coarse) & the room they are being recorded in
2 - The microphones that are recording #1
3 - The cables that are attached to #2
4 - The mixing board/device that is attached to #3
5 - The recording device that is actually recording the music onto a master medium
6 - The master medium being copied onto another medium that can be played in your Hi End system

All of the above, we are at the mercy of the folks that recorded the music. To really achieve any sense of realism, a recoding engineer must know what he is doing, and must use the best recording devices he can (devices that are well matched like a fine hi end audio system).

Even taking the utmost care in recording, getting 'truly live sound' from most recordings is NOT EVEN THE ENDING GOAL (most of the time). Many music production companies just want their stuff to be ablel to sound good on the average jambox. A few specialty recording labels (e.g. Chesky), do use high quality audio reference systems to moniter their recordings.

Thus, the odds of ever getting truly live realistic sound out of any recording using any hi end system are... well... are very slim if not impossible.

What is possible, however, is to get a good sense of the music and the artists creating it. We can hear the subtlities of the performance that make artists great. We can even get an illusion of the artist in our rooms that grabs onto our imagination, but many times is oh so surreal because live music almost invaribly never sounds like this. Heck, I have had sound engineers who have been recording music for 30 years tell me that stereo recordings really are false (so is the whole concept of soundstage) and the best recordings are in MONO because at live music due to all the sound reflections, you really only hear stuff in MONO. These guys record only in MONO. These guys probably have a point, but I am adicted to the sound of stereo.

This all being said, let me get back to Neutrality vs. Realism. Realism should be the end goal of a recording... but almost invaribly it is not. Neutrality of a hi fi system should get us to the end goal of realistic sound if it can be attained.

The problem I have with the last paragraph I just wrote is defining NEUTRALITY. What exactly are we saying when we bandy about the term 'neutrality'? Is it flat frequency response from a system??? What I say to this is good luck getting flat frequency response out of any system. Even if one's speakers can deliver a flat frequency response from 20hz to 20khz, most rooms that people listen to music (in their espective houses) will NOT have a flat frequency response with this speaker. Just to support a 20hz frequency, any idea how long a room must be? Frankly I forget... but I want to say somewhere around 100'+. This does not even take into consideration other reflections and frequency absorbtions that occur in most rooms. Then you have to consider your listening position and having your ears precisely on axis. This can be more difficult than it sounds.

Even with the capability of getting a flat 20hz to 20khz from one's speakers and one's room does not insure it is going to happen. Contrary to the myth that was started during the THD (Total Harmonic Distortion) Wars of the 80's, stated statists tell us little about an amplifer's ability to produce sound through any given speaker. One's amplification and speaker interact with each other in such a way that that they MUST be mated well together. there are reasons why their are $300 amps and $3000 amps and even $30000 amps. I could go off on this tangent for many paragraphs but I will get back to my point.

In addition to amplification one's preamplification can (and does) make a HUGE difference in how a system sounds. Preamplification can influence frequency response quite a bit. I have heard too many preamps that are rolled off both the top and bottom ends with an emphasized midrange. Additionally, your preamp must match your amp and speakers and sources.

Sources to can affect frequency response.

Anyway enough on frequency response. FR is not the end all thing in audio. One might be able to have flat frequency response from an amp / speaker / room combination; however, one's source and preamp can make HUGE impacts on the subtle details of sound that comes out of the speakers. The end detail of the sound of a system can only be as good as the sound that is coming out of the source being played.

The preamplification regulates the volume/gain of this sound, and has an amazing impact on the resolution/transparancy/detail of a system.

So what does Neutrality have to do with system resolution/transparancy/detail? This is a good question. Frequency response can be measured per se... but the actual resoultion of sound of what is being played is a mUCH more subtle thing. And measuring it... is problematic.

This is where I think the term MUSICAL enters the picture. Musical systems IMHO can convey the subtle detail that is offered by recordings. Musical systems work at getting a flat frequency response; however, due to the many problems listed above, this may not be altogether possible. HOWEVER, the trade offs a musical system has in frequency response, are made up by this presentation of detail. Musical systems are also balanced and well matched. Aiming to get the BEST SOUND POSSIBLE FROM THE SPEAKERS OF THE SYSTEM. Many speakers just cannot dynamically (or produce 20hz to 20khz flatly) come close to live music. Speakers such as Maggie 3.6's, I would say are very musical speakers. With the right electronics the 3.6's can show incredible musical detail.

Effectively, every system is limited to the end sound of the speakers of that system. And the speakers end sound is limited to the room that they are in. Neutrality is a very difficult term to define as it relates to audio systems. Musicality of a system has something to do with how well one can get their speakers to sound in the given room. Component matching is very important in a given system. Realistic sound is well... a bit of an oxymoran (most of the time) because most recordings are not recorded to be monitored as 'realistc'.

So what is the goal we are striving for as audiophiles? I would put forward the following:

To work at getting our speakers and room to sound as realistic or live sounding as possible using recordings that were recorded to sound live (unamplified music is best). Very few recordings qualify here... Most of us have to trade off frequency response and dynamics; HOWEVER, inner detail is something that is on recordings that allows us to hear what the music did sound like in the studio as it was recorded. We can hear subtilty and inner detail in our systems.

I must leave now, I wish I had more time to elaborate because I have not even adressed many other issues. And I fear I have over simplified everything I have stated above.

KF

Thsalmon: Right on! Your descriptions, although generalized, match my impressions exactly in every case. Funny how that works!

Re the original post, I'm not sure what point is being made here. "Neutrality" and "Realism" ought to be one and the same, so maybe I'm not understanding the definitions. In my mind, both describe a desire to approach the original recorded sound as closely as possible, without "romantic" or "euphonic" colorations (which many people undoubtedly prefer to realism). Unless maybe you are referring to neutrality as a measurement quality rather than a sonic one, in which case you have a point. By the way, I have never felt Madrigal products to be anywhere near neutral, at least by my definition of the term. They have always sounded extremely polite and sanitized, and quite lacking in life. Many people would refer to this as "refined", and some might even call it "neutral", but I think that is a misnomer. "Neutral" to me means that you can't tell the component is there, and that is most certainly not the case with their products. Granted, their deviations from neutrality are on the "subtractive" side rather than the "additive" side (eg, Krell), but they are not neutral.