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
This is correct. A system that makes different recordings sound more distinct from eachother is more neutral than one that imposes its own sugar coated coloration on everything.
Just because I am in a contrary mood tonight, I can't resist pointing out that this goes against any reasonable definition of the word neutral (making things sound more distinct from each other, I mean). I have always thought that this is the silliest of the many silly terms batted around to describe sound. Someone should really come up with a better term for that phenomena.
I don't think it's a silly term when applied in this way. I suppose you could think of alternate silly terms -- clean, unobtrusive, honest, flat. Neutrality in this application isn't referring to making things sound more distinct, but that things sound more distinct because of the lack of signature (neutrality) of the component(s) producing them.
This is an excellent topic to throw around Byron. For me, it is absolutely essential that Neutrality be defined a certain way. How does one know that what they are hearing, is not influenced by any coloration? You have to know what the intended original piece sounds like. The way I started was using equipment that was noted in the industry for representing true unadulterated signals. Studio equipment. Specifically speakers. As my experience increased with time, familiarity with recordings became a standardized way to help interpret any subjective additions to the way these original recordings were engineered to sound. Discerning neutrality takes a while to figure out. There is no formula. It's almost like research, in that you need to learn how to rule out variables that influence the contolled conditions. A lot of study is required in reading, listening, trial and error,and communication with every source available to you to help you achieve this level of realization. Many individuals have only the experiences of others in making their own conclusions as to this and that . And thats OK. But, there has to be a WANTING to understand for oneself how these different equipment, technologies could play a role in defining the original intended source. How an engineer takes "NEUTRALITY" and makes it into wonderful sounding music is THE key to high-end audio. Not by the addition of coloration. Sure, a well extended lower frequency response may sound nice, or a rolled off sugnature may help "tame" the upper frequency curves, but is that what the music is supposed to sound like?