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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
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
Here is one phenomena that I've experienced:

Preamp in or out of the system - most preamps, except the very best in the world tend to "homogenize" the sound IME, even the ones that I have modded. This causes the turntable, CD player and computer to all sound very similar. Because this is not jitter or frequency response, I believe the difference is added compression. This is the inability of the preamp to reproduce accurately the transient excursions in the music. The preamp has changed the dynamic response.

When the preamp is effectively eliminated, the different sources tend to sound much different from each other.

Also, tracks that previiously were not very interesting to listen to are now compelling.

I believe this is one of the major problems with analog audio equipment.

This is what I call the liveness factor.

Neutrality usually refers to an evenhandedness from top to bottom, which can certainly be changed with frequency response. Hoever, most high-end gear has excellent frequency response, so the explanation for this is likely transient response, not frequency response.
blindjim
3,092 posts
 

Audioengr

you had me worried there for a minute... I thought my preamp wasn't any good and I needed a better one, quick.

Thankfully as you alluded, each source thru mine sounds OK, good, better, or best, as the case maybe.... yet any source once attached is improved noticeably.

I'll settle for that 'standard'.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,432 posts
 
Audioengr - Most of recordings have some form of compression and some are really bad. Wouldn't they sound better with an amp that expands dynamics (instead of being neutral). What about soundstaging? Is deeper and wider better than more accurate positioning. Could it be too deep or too wide? How do we know what studio intended?

Warm tube amps sound wonderful on guitar or voice bot not so good on instruments with complex harmonic structure like percussion or piano? What if I don't listen to piano?

One can measure identical frequency response of two components with very different sound (tube vs. SS). What you compare it to. How do you measure it. In my opinion measurements can offer some clues but I would not use them to buy a system. If I cannot trust measurements then it comes to my or other people opinion - and that is highly subjective. It might depend on many factors including age. Would "neutral" system sound the same to young Hindu and old Latino?

I'm not even sure if being neutral is a virtue. What if system has its own wonderful personality. What's wrong with that? Are we trying to find best tasting or most neutral wine?
cbw723
89 posts
 
Kijanki writes:
"Would "neutral" system sound the same to young Hindu and old Latino?"

No, it would sound different to every person that listened to it, but that's not the point. The point is whether or not it recreates their version of reality, and only a neutral system could do that for everyone. If each person listens to a guitar, each person hears something different. But if the goal is to make a recording sound, as much as possible, like the source, neutrality seems important in achieving it.

"Are we trying to find best tasting or most neutral wine?"

In our case, "wine" is the music, and our systems are the glass you drink it from. Do you want a glass that flavors all of your wine?
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