phusis, fantastic post! 100% in agreement.
What Neutral Means in Reviews & Our Discussions? Are We Confusing Tame/Flat For Neutral?
Does tame or flat = neutral? Shouldn’t "neutral" in describing audio sound mean uncolored and accurate to what the artists sounded like to the naked ear at the time of the master recording? Or is neutral, as used in our community, intended to mean a lack of crescendo, or the like?
I realize this may get controversial, so lets be mindful of other’s experiences and insight. I’m going to use Dynaudio as an example. They’re often touted as being amongst the most neutral of speaker lines. Monitor Audio is another example of such reviews. I’ve listened to several middle of the line Dynaudio’s, including many times at my brother’s house, where he has them mated to an EAD Power Master 1000 thru MIT cables. They do sound beautiful, airy, smooth, and even slightly warm to my ear (though the touch of warmth could easily be the MITs and EAD). His common statement supporting how great they are is, the audio recording industry sound engineers prefer them as their monitors. But I’ve read that the reason audio engineers prefer them is because they are smooth and "flat" or "level", enabling the engineers to hear the difference of the nuances which they create as they manipulate sound during the editing process. Apparently lively or musical monitors, many engineers find to be a distractor, with too much information over riding what they want to focus on as they edit the sound.
I’ve enjoyed watching live bands at small venues for over 3 decades. Anything from a pianist, to cover bands, to original artists of anything from rock, blues, jazz, etc. My personal listening preference for home audio is dynamic sound which brings the live event to me ... soundstage, detail, with air, transparency AND depth. I want it all, as close as it can get for each given $. When I’ve listened to Dynaudios, Ive always come away with one feeling ... they’re very nice to listen too; they’re smooth and pleasing, airy ... and tame.
Recently while reading a pro review of the latest Magico S7 (I’ve never heard them), a speaker commonly referenced as amazingly neutral, the reviewer mentioned how, while capable of genuine dynamics, they seem to deliberately supress dynamics to enough of an extent that they favor a more pleasurable easy going listening experience.
That’s what jarred my thought. Does "neutral" mean tame/flat; does it mean accurate without audible peaks in db of one frequency over another, which is not on the recording; or is it something we’ve minced words about and have lost the genuine meaning of in the name of some audio form of political correctness?
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OP, Thanks for your thoughtful response. I am happy that we share observations over time. As is said language is a living thing. I remember being perplexed on a problem at a meeting not that long ago an said, “I’d have to noodle on it”. This was followed by shrieks of laughter by the 20/30 year olds. Well, us old farts use the term as an expression to “think about”… the new definition is a flaccid sex act… terminology changes.
But honestly. This is a very multifaceted issue. One driver of the problem is education and experience. Audiogon has a collection of people with a vastly diverse background in audio… from knowing virtually nothing to fifty year dedicated hobbiests. Another is that technology has truly changed… tube stuff converged on neutral as did solid state from opposite sides of the tonal spectrum. So, old terms stuck and got conflated. If you go to the Audio Afficianado forum where, in general, the average user is very serious and has +35 years of experience and probably an average cost of system is over $100K, the definitions much more closely conform to the general accepted terminology of Bob Harley’s book The Complete Guide to High End Audio or the Stereophile Glossary I shared. Why? More homogeneous and highly experienced user group.
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@ghdprentice
In one of my previous lives I was doing some home nursing for a college age kid, & he & one of his friends were talking about the new color scheme for some college team’s football uniforms, & his friend said that they "were sick." For the longest time I thought that meant he didn’t like them. Your post made me think of that. How right you are.
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“Neutral” is up there with “accurate” as the most misused terms in audio. Les McCaan, indeed; compared to what? Some misuse the two terms to describe a sound that, to me, is lean, too bright and often bleached out. The.terms should be used to describe a component that neither adds nor subtracts anything from the signal as it passes through it on the way to the next component in the system, or, in the case of speakers, to the listener’s ears. As has been pointed out, true neutrality, or accuracy, are very lofty goals and ultimately unattainable since every component alters the signal to some degree. However, some components do an infinitely better job than others of preserving signal integrity. The sound of live acoustic (not amplified) instruments and voice have a lot of natural color and warmth. Their sound is not colorless (bleached) which is what many think a “neutral” sound is. It is not true that the sound of live acoustic music cannot be used as a reference for judging the sound of a component. The key is to think in terms of degree of electronic signature that the component adds. The sound of live acoustic music has zero electronic signature, The component that adds less electronic signature to the sound can be said be closer to neutral than the component that adds more electronic signature. With recordings of electronic (amplified) instruments all bets are off. |
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