Tidal Speakers owners

Thg,

This is getting tiresome. It really doesn't matter what you can accept. Can you define what you mean by neutrality? It obviously is something different than undistorted, uncolored and uncompressed. I have just written that there is not one neutrality measurement but that you have to use all the measurements and look for distortion, coloration or compression. If there are, the speaker is not neutral.

No speaker is truly neutral. There is no speaker which has absolute ruler-flat frequency- and phase-response without any hint of any kind of distortion. They all have deviations from perfectly neutral. The different manufacturers have different priorities though and use different technologies which result in the mix of deviations from neutral they are able to acheive and prefer most of cost and political reasons. Many brands have a "house"-sound which sells speakers. This doesn't mean that their speakers are neutral. I would for instance guess that a Magico Q5 is far more neutral than the Wilson Alexandria without having seen the measurements. Still many prefer the fun factor of the Wilson speakers. That is because they prefer the Alexandrias deviations from neutral more than the deviations of the Q5.

Still if there was such a thing as a perfectly neutral speaker, it would not be a guarantee that it would be the universally preferred choice. Many listeners actually prefer more than less coloration in certain areas. Also keep in mind that no electronic component or recording is perfectly neutral either. So a perfectly neutral speaker would reveal all the deviations from neutral in the electronics, cables, the room and the recording. Many would not prefer that. This is the reason matching is so important. We need to find combinations of equipment that mask out each othersdeviations from neutral to a degree we like. Still if this sounds neutral, measurements will show that its not. The ears can be unreliable and our taste misleading if the goal is neutrality. However most don't really prefer neutrality and that is where subjectivity comes in because it is of course different what kind of combination of mix of distortion, coloration and compression we prefer.

Neutral is never ever subjective. How can it be? Its like claiming that the length of one feet is subjective.

I think I see the issue here. You don't accept that high fidelity (neutral) is the goal. OK, that's your take on it.

But the larger problem with your posts, Tbg, and I don't mean to be disrespectful of you, is that you are ignorant when it comes to how good speakers are designed. If you can honestly say that you put no confidence in companies that share some standard measurement protocol, then you truly are ignorant of what goes on. Things like smooth frequency response, wide dispersion, low distortion . . . these aren't just words, these are goals of good design. It's like saying you would not trust a car maker that uses engineering to design an auto. Of course these companies also use listening, but engineering is the backbone of the design process. YOU don't understand the measurements that equate to neutrality, but that is a YOU problem. I'm sorry, but it is difficult to debate intelligently with someone that has not bothered to learn a few simple truths.

Talking about measurements, can anyone tell me where can I find any measurements of any Tidal loudspeaker?

Holenneck, I think you misidentify my orientation and my experience. As I said repeatedly, measures of frequency response, phase, and dispersion are goals and used. But there is much beyond this and that is where listening comes into play. I have personally experienced designers coming to grips with their prototypes that meet the measurement criteria but fail to sound good

I was primarily reacting to Roysen exaggeration of the word "neutral," as though it had some objective measurement. I don't think most designer seek to "voice" their designs to be something other than realistic and uncolored, but I have never known a designer who didn't go for the best sound within their "price point."

This really is the classic "subjectivist" v. "objectivist" argument once again. There is no resolution to it. I am as are the vast majority of the designers I know, subjectivists who use some measurements when appropriate.

05-02-11: Roysen
Neutral is not subjective. Neutral is no coloration, no distortion and no compression. The degree of neutrality can be measured by comparing the input with the output.

05-05-11: Fiddler
Every component, including speakers, puts it's signature on the sound. The only way one could know if a component is neutral is to listen to that component (without any other components in the system - which is not possible) and compare it against the original, live event...Neutral is subjective - PERIOD!

05-07-11: Tbg
Roysen, I don't accept that neutrality is objective. I find it strange that you use this term, but I unaware of an neutrality meter. What are the measurements of neutrality?

I think there are two separate, but related, issues contained in the comments above...

(1) IS component x neutral?
(2) HOW DO YOU KNOW if component x is neutral?

As far as I can tell, Roysen is using the term "neutrality" to mean the same thing as "accuracy." Hence, for him, neutrality is: The degree of absence of inaccuracies. Inaccuracies are deviations of a component's output from its input. By those definitions, the neutrality of a component is OBJECTIVE. That is to say, there are objective truths about the ways in which a component's output deviates from its input.

But Fiddler and Tbg seem to be asking a different question, namely: HOW DO YOU KNOW the ways in which a component is inaccurate, and hence HOW DO YOU KNOW the extent to which it is neutral? This is a valid question. One possible response is: the various measurements of accuracy, some of which routinely occur in Stereophile. But I believe that that response does not entirely answer the concerns of Subjectivists.

The reason is because it is often difficult to know the ways in which a component is inaccurate. The measurements available to consumers, and even those available to manufacturers, are often not exhaustive. Because of that, the neutrality of a component may be difficult, or even impossible, for the end user to assess. In that sense, our KNOWLEDGE of a component's neutrality is, to some extent, SUBJECTIVE.

Personally, I do believe that some components are more neutral than others. I also believe that there are methods of assessing the neutrality of a component, WITHIN CERTAIN LIMITS. Roysen proposed one method: measurements. I proposed an alternative method in a another thread in which the topic of neutrality was discussed at great length.

Hence, I am an Objectivist. In other words, I believe that there is such a thing as truth. But many truths are elusive, and our knowledge is therefore incomplete. In the context of audio, Subjectivism is valid to the extent that its truths are elusive and our knowledge is incomplete.

Bryon