How do you judge your system's neutrality?

How will you know when what you are hearing from a component is true neutrality to the source

Good question.

They have the same problem in pro audio. Sound engineers are constantly concerned with how the mix translates to other (often inferior) systems like cars and radio.

Here is a suggestion: If you want to hear Telarc recordings as close to how they intended (as neutral as possible) then you can find out what gear they use and use the same. It still won't be totally neutral unless you acoustically treat your listening environment to a high standard but at least you will be closer to hearing what they hear and what they intended you to hear or as "neutral" as possible...

Jult52 wrote:
"When you are asked whether you like a particular recording, do you ever say, with great approval, 'It was neutral!' Didn't think so."

I agree with this, as I said in an earlier post. Again, neutrality is not a virtue of music or of recording. It is a virtue of a playback system.

Newbee wrote:
"Consider that perhaps none of the components previously assembled by you are in fact neutral but just complimentary and happen to meet your expectations of what you think neutrality sounds like, and the new component introduced is just synergistic with these other components."

I have considered this. In fact, it is the motivation for the title of this thread, "How do you judge your system's neutrality?" In my original post, I proposed one possible way of judging a system's neutrality.

Newbee wrote:
"I have a bit of a challenge for you. How will you know when what you are hearing from a component is true neutrality to the source, or if not, how much it deviates from true neutrality, if not by hearing it thru a collection of components previously assembled by you."

It is, of course, impossible to hear a component individually. We can only hear it in the context of a system. Because of this inescapable fact, there is always a potential fallacy when we hear a characteristic of an audio system and then attribute that characteristic to an individual component. A system might sound bright. Is it the speakers? Is it the cd player? Is it an impedance matching issue? If we get this wrong, we’ve made the Fallacy of Division, i.e., the misattribution of a system characteristic to one of the system’s components. But the danger of making this mistake does not mean we shouldn’t try to understand a system in terms of the contribution of its components.

As audiophiles, we are constantly confronted with situations that require us to make educated guesses about how to attribute system characteristics to individual components. Sometimes we get it wrong. Sometimes the system characteristic cannot be reduced to a single component, but only to the interaction of two (or more) components. But we have no choice but to try understand the contribution of each system element. That is an implicit assumption every time we upgrade a component. In our efforts to improve a system’s performance, we try to identify which component is the weak link and replace it with a stronger one. Because of this, the attempt to reduce system characteristics to component characteristics is unavoidable. It is fallible. But it is what we have.

Newbee wrote:
"You asked how I could question your views on neutrality in a post subsequent to my last post."

Newbee - My questions in response to you last post were not designed to ask how you could question my views on neutrality. I am happy for you to question my views on neutrality. That is the fun of these threads! My questions were just a rhetorical device, in an attempt to make the point that neutrality is not an all or nothing thing. If I gave the impression that I am not open to you questioning my point of view, I apologize. I have been enjoying this thread a great deal, precisely because we don't all agree with each other.

Bryon, you say that 'neutrality is not an all or nothing thing'. We disagree!

At the risk of being redundant, neutrality is the end result of combining many components of sound, including absolute resolution and perfect frequency response. Rather than refer to 'neutrality' I think it is more productive to refer to its components, if for no other reason than it helps folks achieve their goals. Using the term neutrality as a goal is, for me, no different that using the phrase absolute sound, i.e. live music (thanks to Harry Pearson). It is unachievable and serves no really worthwhile purpose other than to put consumers on an endless (and expensive) pursuit (goal) of the achieving the impossible.

It works well for folks with commercial interests though. Nothing better in fact. How would you ever be able to sell stuff without having pretention to moving one closer to the goal of live sounds or neutrality. And, somehow, I sense from a lot of posts in these pages that folks who don't buy into these goals as having great value to them are gently (or not so by some self absorbed, self proclaimed sound experts) treated as audio's leapers.

Someone mentioned in this or another post that in his pursuit of some form of audio perfection he had lost his ability to just get involved with and enjoy the music as he had experienced in the past with lesser equipment and different interests. His experience is not unique. In fact there is a long lived thread "How do I get off this carousel" or something like that. Many folks, myself included, have at some point, become so absorbed with counting the trees we can no longer see the forest. When we sit down in the listening chair we are more focused on the 'sounds' and get sucked into questioned ourselves about how we could improve the sound, i.e. how can I get better depth of image, how can I get a higher image, how can I get better bass, ad infinitum. At one point I realized I was so sbsorbed when I found I was actually enjoying the MUSIC more when I was listening to it from a nearby room (my office) and couldn't hear all of those highly prised 'audiophile' attributes such as imaging etc.

Anyway, that's what I really think, I think.

Newbee wrote:
"Using the term neutrality as a goal is, for me, no different that using the phrase absolute sound, i.e. live music (thanks to Harry Pearson). It is unachievable and serves no really purpose other than to put consumers on an endless (and expensive) pursuit (goal) of the achieving the impossible. It works well for folks with commercial interests though."

I have no commercial interests of any kind in the audio industry. I don't even know anyone who has a commercial interest in the audio industry.

In addition, I don't see how treating neutrality as a virtue in an audio system is any more likely to lead to equipment addiction than treating resolution, transparency, dynamics, imaging, etc. as a virtue. Any one of these characteristics can be fetishized, if a person is so inclined. I do not believe that I have fetishized neutrality in this thread. In fact, in my original post, I wrote:

"I’m not suggesting that neutrality is the most important goal in building an audio system..."

In a subsequent post, I wrote:

"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."

As I believe is obvious from these comments, I do not think that neutrality is of paramount important, of exclusive importance, or of essential importance. In my view, it is simply one goal among many. That is the view I have expressed throughout this thread. To suggest otherwise is to make a straw man of me.

Kijanki wrote:
"Well - I'm my own playback engineer and I choose the sound I like."

I think most of us do this to some extent, since we put a fair amount of effort into modifying our system and keep the changes that we think make things sound better.

But what makes things "sound better?" Sometimes it's a change in resolution. Sometimes it's a shift in tonal balance. Sometimes it's improved dynamics. And so on. In each case, we use our experience and our taste to make a judgment. The point of this thread is to talk about another aspect of one's system that may make things sound better.

We each weight these things as we see fit. Some people might not care about anything but resolution or pinpoint imaging, to the exclusion of everything else. Some people, like Newbee, don't think neutrality exists. So these people weight neutrality zero when considering system changes. You seem to prefer some degree of coloration, so there are at least some aspects of neutrality you don't care about. But to me, if I make a change and different instruments sound more different (while, obviously, remaining true to what they are), as Bryon suggested in his original post, then I've affected something that may make the music more enjoyable.

As for being one's own engineer, it's intriguing to think that we could individually EQ every song in our collection. It would even be worth the effort on some tracks. But, honestly, I think compression is our biggest enemy in the source, and I don't see a way to restore that without the cooperation of the record companies.