Neutral or Detailed. You can't have both

I can certainly see the point you are making erik, but like others I don't quite agree with your ultimate thesis here.

Certainly a goosed upper frequency region can make a speaker sound more detailed at lower playback levels.

But the move to "therefore a neutral speaker won't sound detailed at low playback levels" seems to be the stretch here.

If, for instance, I'm playing my acoustic guitar (or someone else is) extremely quietly, there is still a sense of effortless, open, high resolution, even to the sound of the fingertips on strings, that is not found in many speakers when played at a similar volume.  (I actually use a recording of my guitar sometimes to check out the realism of a system with a sound I know well).

So it still seems to me that a high fidelity speaker, if both neutral and high resolution, would retain both those characteristics, like real sounds, even when played at lower levels.

I consider my present system to be the most neutral sounding I've ever had and as a result, I can play it at quite a low setting and get excellent detail retrieval, or resolution as some may call it. The only thing that's not up to the same level is, of course, dynamics and weight.

I fell you can, and should have both, since one is necessary for the other.

All the best,
Nonoise

Prof: 

Give specific examples of speakers you consider detailed and neutral. 

Nonoise:

Same. :) What speakers are you talking about? 

erik,

To be clear:  My argument was a sort of "in principle" argument.   My example was using real life sounds as the stand in for "neutrality."   An acoustic guitar played life is, in this sense, experiencing a "perfectly neutral" sound, in the sense no additional artificial distortions are being added by anything.   It's an ideal of what a truly "neutral" system could re-create, which suggests neutrality is not in opposition to experiencing fine detail at low sound levels.   So, in principle, "detailed sound" and "low levels" are not at odds.

I hope that is more clear.

(Though they *are* at odds in some psychoacoustical sense, insofar as our hearing apparently perceives more detail/higher end detail as sound gets louder.  But even granting this, I can still experience a finer sense of detail at low sound volumes from real life sounds, vs through most speakers).

As to real world examples, I'm not sure I would be able to come up with any that satisfy you.   I do remember the Waveform Mach Solo speakers retained a satisfying sense of detail at low volume levels, as do a pair of Waveform Mach MC (egg head unit) monitors I still own.

Some measurements for the Mach Solo here:

http://www.audio-ideas.com/reviews/loudspeakers/waveform_mach_solo.html

My bigger Thiel 3.7s also seemed to retain fine detail at lower levels.

Monitor audio speakers I auditioned a while back, too.

I'm not sure if there are really very many speakers out there that everyone could agree on (even speaker designers/enthusiasts) as being "totally neutral."  It seems there is always some departure from neutral that can be found in measurements, that someone will point to.