How do you judge your system's neutrality?

Here is what I have gained from everyone's input:

Neutrality is a difficult ideology to wrap one's brain around, and most likely will remain that way. Because of this, experience plays a very important role in attaining one's own ideologies of defining neutrality. One ultimate realization is that the recording environment, specifically concerning the engineer's own summation of what sounds "right", will always remain subjective and a mystery to the person contemplating these notions from their listening chair. As far as the designer of high end equipment, cost factor will be a variable that can/will determine the end results, but only to a certain degree.

A new "fad" will gain noteriety after Abucktwoeighty's findings on ear geology. I predict plastic surgions will see a rise in audiophile related "tweaks", where cheaper vs. more expensive ear tweaking operations will lead to many arguements over why a 50,000 dollar ear operation can resolve more than a 10,000 dollar ear operation. Abucktwoeighty...thanks for the horror.

Learsfool - Excellent post. I don't think we are much closer to agreeing with each other, but I definitely understand and appreciate your point of view better now.

Your observations about recordings being colored is well taken. I have spent time in mixing stages and I know how much "coloration" is added to a typical recording. Neutrality is not a virtue in the recording studio. It is a virtue in the playback system. By having a playback system that is as neutral as possible, you will be closest to hearing WHAT WAS HEARD IN THE RECORDING STUDIO, and therefore you will be closest to hearing the INTENTIONS OF THE ARTIST (and the intentions of the recording engineer, and the studio executive, and the studio executive's five year old child...but that is a lamentation for another day). The point is that what makes for good recording (namely, coloration) and what makes for good playback (namely, neutrality) are different, and often opposite.

Learsfool wrote:
"However, I must repeat that there is no such thing as absolute neutrality."

I agree with this, if it means: No component or system is perfectly neutral. I disagree with this, if it means: There is nothing against which we can measure the neutrality of a component or system. Which brings me to...

Newbee - I wasn't suggesting that audiophiles should be "objective." An Objectivist is not someone who is objective. An Objectivist is someone who believes that there is such a thing as truth. An Objectivist, with respect to sonic neutrality, therefore, is a person who believes that components and systems can be evaluated as to their "truthfulness." Sometimes you hear that expressed in terms of "what is on the recording." Other times you hear that expressed in terms of the real-world event that the recording captured. I would express it in terms of what was heard in the recording studio when the artist and engineer leaned back in their chairs and said, "We're done. Let's take a listen." Of course, we can't compare our systems to what they heard without a time machine, but I don't think that means we must abandon the idea of neutrality (now: truthfulness) in a playback system. It means we must find other ways to determine the neutrality of a playback system, which is precisely why, I believe, we need to operationalize the term 'neutrality.' That was the goal in my original post.

To put another one of my cards on the table: I am an Objectivist, in the sense above, with respect to sonic neutrality. That is to say, I believe that some components and systems reproduce recordings more truthfully than others.

As to the doubt, expressed by several posters, that neutrality is a vital consideration in assembling a satisfying music system, I am actually somewhat agnostic. In my (admittedly limited) experiences, the changes to my system that resulted in greater neutrality (now: truthfulness) were the same changes that resulted in more musical enjoyment for me. But I am open to the idea that this was just an accident of my personal upgrade history.

Newbee, there's a lot to be objective about. In GET BETTER SOUND, Jim Smith makes a case (tip #171) that the "personal taste" argument is flawed. He argues that if there were perfect speakers, almost everyone would prefer them. In fact, his whole book is dedicated to getting the system out of the way so you can get closer to the "live" sound of your music.

I don't even understand the subjectivist argument. I can imagine listening to a specific piece of music and thinking "they should have mixed the percussion higher" or "that should have been a cello not a bass" or "they should have upped the tempo there." But I can't imagine saying "all music should have more X," where "X" is some factor imposed by the playback system (except, of course, where X = "fidelity to the source"). What would it be that you'd want your system to add (that isn't in the source) to everything you listen to? Bass? Treble? Harmonics? Rap lyrics? It's all distortion that might make some music sound better to you, but other music will certainly sound worse.

And this is, I think, the source of Bryon's observation in the original post. When you remove a bit of system distortion, different things sound more different because a common element has been removed from everything you hear.

"When you remove a bit of system distortion, different things sound more different because a common element has been removed from everything you hear."

Exactly my experience through hundreds of internal modifications to components. I'm in the camp of the Objectivists-- except for slight reservations about where the truth lies in LF. A few recent speaker designs like Emerald Physics and Bamberg use Class D digitally EQ'd bass amps to deliver a qualitatively different kind of LF extension and control. This is all fairly new, and I feel more subjectivity judging the shifting paradigm for neutrality in LF than in other areas of FR.

Hi Byron - I must make an observation here. You posted that you want to hear as close as possible to what is heard in the recording studio. My point about the actual recording studios is that you would NEVER want to do this. Recording studios are not designed for listening to music - they are extremely dead, with none of the reverberance or other positive sound characteristics of an actual live music venue. They sound terrible, actually, and it is quite difficult to play in them. Everyone is isolated from everyone else, using click-tracks to stay together - there is much less connection between the performers than normal. Often every single performer is on a separate track, if it is a small group. As I said before, this is all done by design, so that the recording engineer can design the sound to his own specifications - they have complete control, and you are at their mercy as to what you are going to end up sounding like. There is almost nothing "real" about a recording studio. Some of the most famous artists, whether pop or classical, will of course have some measure of control if they wish it, but most often the studio execs have the control. As an orchestral musician, I certainly have no input as to what I end up sounding like (though most orchestras making a symphonic recording do not record in recording studios, of course, but in a real live venue - I am speaking of say an orchestra put together to record a jingle for a TV commercial, etc.). The orchestral players that record for all the movie and television studios (both Hollywood and London and anywhere else), for instance, have no control over their own sounds, either, and I can tell you that they are quite often very dissatisfied with the results when they see the film in the theaters or the episode on TV. Even young and up and coming wannabe pop stars usually have no control over what they sound like, either - their sound is designed by the record label execs. If you heard them without the mikes and the mixing boards, which are of course always present when they perform live as well, the vast majority of them would be unrecognizable. I think even some of the most knowledgeable audiophiles would be shocked and horrified if they realized just how their favorite rock and pop singers sound "for real." There is almost no "truth," as you call it, to anything that comes out of a recording studio, in the vast majority of cases, as opposed to something recorded in a live venue. If the producers want it to sound like a live venue, they will record in one.