How do you judge your system's neutrality?

Bryon, so much of this is about convergence. Interesting speculation that as we move up the food chain of components, instead of arriving at a convergence of opinion, distinctions continue regarding nuances. This is understandable, as once the worst of common coloration is removed, the more small differences are revealed for scrutiny.

In the past few years we increasingly read magazine editors & reviewers remark upon the accelerating pace of sonic improvement. The context for these remarks is usually highly-engineered solutions that stand out from previous designs. I'm inclined to agree with some of this-- particularly in the area of loudspeakers and piece parts. As a generalization, the best equipment is beginning to sound more alike, and the few remaining differences between the best components are more challenging to articulate. Yet even as a rising tide lifts all boats, small differences still tend to jump out at you. Reviewers continue to make distinctions using the same words, but the words describe a changed reality closer to convergence. Does this arise merely because of the all too human need to make distinctions(and to sell magazines), even without meaningful differences? If the pace of change continues, at some point ALL components will join Stereophile Class A Recommended Components, even as the magazine's reviewers continue to try to communicate uniqueness in the full reviews.

The aging of the high end consumer has also brought nostalgia into tastes and purchases. Vinyl takes us back, MM/MI takes us back, under-engineered SET amps takes us back. In the context of aging, coloration becomes a virtue.

Finally, through the economic bubble there has been a huge accumulation of high-end inventory in the marketplace-- much of it falling into the bland middle ground of the bell curve of performance. During this period boutique manufacturers and costly components proliferated all out of bounds, and with this the challenge to review and compare equipment. In some instances subjective opinions about the advantages of certain colorations may be used to advance hidden agendas or retroactively to justify unwise purchases.

Interesting posts, guys. First, the 50K systems example. I thought I had made it clear that I was also speaking of this level of system in my example. I do indeed maintain that even if heard in exactly the same space (easily done in a large dealer's biggest showroom, for example), that anyone, not just audiophiles, will hear significant differences between several different systems. I think the designers of the equipment in question would be appalled at the idea that someone couldn't. Frankly, I am baffled by the very idea that there should be eventual "convergence" - one of my favorite things to do is hear how different the exact same source material can sound on several different systems. I think the variety out there in high end audio is a good thing, and that it is a bad thing that new stuff coming out sounds more and more the same.

Dgarretson's comment about his vinyl and CD rigs sounding more and more like each other as he improves them (if I am paraphrasing properly) I think actually speaks more to my own point - they sound more the same not necessarily because the technology is "better" (though it certainly could be), but because he is refining his own personal "reference point," and only in this sense might it be considered more "neutral," and even then only for him and others with similar sonic tastes. A different person, audiophile or not, may think it sounds much less like live music, or "neutral," or whatever their reference point is. As I said before, I don't think this is a bad thing at all. Every audiophile has to decide for themselves what their own personal reference point is. Much of what Dgarretson says about auditory memory is true - but what can also be the case, it should be pointed out, is that sometimes in the quest to improve the sound of their systems, many audiophiles completely lose the forest for the trees, and begin thinking that their system sounds "better" than live music. I certainly don't consider my own system the best of all possible worlds. As far as "golden ears" go, I have never heard anyone actually claim to have them. This is usually used as a derogatory term in my experience. The fact is, some people do hear better than others, and there are a great many audiophiles out there who do not actually have very good ears. And among people with very good ears, there can still be big variation in the sorts of things they are good at hearing. Yet another reason why you will never get very many people to agree on which system is the most "neutral." Everyone hears differently, whether their ears are trained well or not.

Please do not take this personally, Bryon, but another comment I can't refrain from making is that I don't see how anyone could consider "correct pitch and timbre" part of "neutrality." I actually flinched when I read that - a musician's carefully crafted tone colors are NOT "neutral," and I personally would never want to listen for long to a system that removed subtle differences in this area (as many very expensive latest greatest systems do). Are you saying you really want us to sound the same every time?? This thought is very depressing to me. If "better technology" becomes more important than the music, to the great detriment of the latter, priorities aren't right.

Learsfool wrote:

I don't see how anyone could consider "correct pitch and timbre" part of "neutrality." I actually flinched when I read that - a musician's carefully crafted tone colors are NOT "neutral," and I personally would never want to listen for long to a system that removed subtle differences in this area...

I am not saying that a musician's "tonal colors" are, or should be, neutral. We have already had that conversation on this thread. In your second post, you wrote:

Music is not, and never should be "neutral." As a professional musician, the term has always been hilarious to me when applied in this context. No musician wants to sound "neutral," that's for sure!

To which I responded:

The term 'neutral' is not a description of the music. It is a description of the playback system and its components.

In a subsequent post, I wrote:

Again, neutrality is not a virtue of music or of recording. It is a virtue of a playback system.

And in a recent post, I wrote:

NEUTRALITY: The degree to which a component or system is free from coloration. Once again, this does NOT refer to coloration in the recording, but only to coloration introduced by the playback system.

As I hope is clear from this, my view is that neutrality is NOT a desirable characteristic in music or in recording. It is a desirable characteristic in a playback system.

As to your comment that "I personally would never want to listen for long to a system that removed subtle differences in this area," I am in complete agreement. But it is my view that the more neutral the playback system, the MORE it will reveal subtle differences in tone/timbre. That was my point in the original post, when I wrote:

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.

Learsfool - I think our disagreement here can be reduced to two different answers to the following question:

WOULD A NEUTRAL AUDIO SYSTEM MAKE THE MUSIC SOUND "NEUTRAL"?

Judging from your posts, I believe you would answer this question "Yes." In other words, I think your view is that, the more neutral an audio system is, the more it makes things sound THE SAME. I have the exact opposite view, namely, that the more neutral an audio system is, the more it makes things sound DIFFERENT.

The reasoning for my view is the following: The more neutral an audio system, the less it colors the music with ITS OWN SIGNATURE. The less an audio system colors the music with its own signature, the more you will hear THE SIGNATURE OF THE MUSIC. And the more you hear the signature of the music, the more DISTINCT individual pieces of music will sound, and the more DIVERSE your collection of music will sound.

As to correct pitch and timbre, the rationale for including them under the concept of neutrality is the following: A system that is highly neutral contaminates pitch and timbre (with its own signature) less than one that is highly colored. And the less pitch and timbre are contaminated, the more "correct" they are.

To summarize my view on this: Neutrality (i.e. freedom from coloration) in an audio system does not lead to neutrality (i.e. SAMENESS) in the music played back on it, but rather the opposite. Neutrality in an audio system leads to DIVERSITY in the music played back on it.

Learsfool, there is a remote possibility that the gradual convergence between modded analog & digital sources occurred by coincidence or was guided by a common bias operating separately through two qualitatively different mod processes. However, as analog and digital sources approach each other AND coloration becomes nearly undetectable, then perhaps sufficient conditions for neutrality have been satisfied. Not that listening is a perfect science, or that there are no differences of opinion between listeners regarding neutrality. However once and awhile one hears a system that sounds very much like real music free from coloration, and IMO this should set the particular listener's expectation for neutrality. IMO in terms of flat frequency response, correct pitch and timbre, resolution & transparency, the current SOTA gets quite close to live music. Where all systems seem to fall short is in the dynamics of live music. Or if they communicate excellent dynamics, then they tend to fail by other measures. In any case the quality of dynamics should probably be distinguished from neutrality.

Hi Bryon - I am once again thankful I became a musician, and not a writer. I tend to ramble and obscure the very points I am most trying to make. The answer I would make to your question in your last post is that I believe there is no such thing as a neutral audio system, nor could there be. Every piece of audio equipment is "colored," to use the popular phrase, very deliberately by its designer (otherwise why bother with another design?), just as every recording engineer very deliberately "colors" each recording, just as live music is "colored" by all sorts of variables. Hence, why I think that "neutrality" is a useless concept. I of course agree that a good audio system will make every recording sound different. I just don't think that has anything to do with "neutrality." Many audiophiles oppose the terms "colored" and "neutrality" in the way you do, but if no one can agree on what "neutrality" is, to me it logically follows that no one will completely agree on what "colored" is, either. Even if the "reference point" or "neutrality" is live, acoustic music, as it is for many of us, one can ask where? Which hall? How far back are you seated in said hall? Many audiophiles can't stand horn speakers, or electrostats. Many others won't listen to anything else. Some think vinyl still comes far closer to resolving acoustic instrumental and vocal tone color than anything digital sound has yet produced, others can't stand vinyl. To pick just two very basic, common examples. I think if there were such a thing as a definable, true "neutrality," we wouldn't have the variety in high end audio that we do. With all the great variety of great equipment out there, I think worrying about this elusive "neutrality" is pointless. Just decide what your sonic priorities are for your system, and build it/refine it accordingly. If you like the sound better, than that equipment is better for you - it really is that simple. I think of all of these audiophile terms as guides, not goals in themselves. They are ways in which we can communicate with each other about what we are hearing, since none of us hear the same. When I first started reading the audio mags and sites like this one in preparation for purchasing my system with my very limited funds, my approach in using them was to read them over a long period of time, so I could determine the reviewers/posters sonic preferences and how closely they accorded with my own (and often I learned the most from people I clearly disagreed with - this is very often much more instructive than people you usually agree with, IMO). This helped greatly in narrowing my equipment choices for serious auditioning (I generally listened at least briefly to pretty much anything I could get a chance to hear). But even after careful reading for over a year and a half, I was still sometimes quite surprised by what I heard. Then I would go back and re-read the reviews/posts in question to learn more about what these other people's preferences were, and how they thought about sound (again, I found this much more instructive in cases where I did not agree with the reviewer). I always found the term "neutral" to be the least helpful term out there, as I have heard pretty much every single piece of audio equipment described that way by somebody. In the end, my actual choices of course came down to what I thought sounded best within the parameters of budget, availability, etc. And of course since that time I have continued reading and talking with other audiophiles and musicians in preparation for the time when I can audition new equipment. I have of course also listened to a whole lot more equipment, and there are many other things I want to hear.

Dgarretson, I agree with much of your last post, I would just argue (or perhaps restate would be a better word) that you have not rendered coloration almost undetectable - you have just built/refined your system closer to your personal reference point of live music. I think that is a much more workable concept that can apply to all audiophiles, regardless of their tastes/preferences/biases. Any designer will be very quick to tell you why his/her equipment sounds different and better and why (whether it actually does or not), often offering up a great deal of cloudy techno-babble by way of explanation (particularly when it doesn't really sound that different). There are many dealers out there who avoid sonic description entirely, and judge the equipment they carry on specs alone. I don't need to tell you that there are always very audible sonic differences between say, two different speaker pairs both purporting to have flat frequency responses. Or that some of the most widely respected speakers in existence don't have anywhere close to a flat frequency response, including many deemed "neutral."

By the way, I agree that most systems fall short in dynamics, however I think most fall far shorter in the area of timbral reproduction, and also in what many audiophiles call "imaging" and "soundstaging." Digital systems in particular tend to have a hard time with those three issues - even the latest greatest processing still tends to remove much of the overtones in instrumental and vocal timbres. However, many audiophiles don't consider these issues a big deal, since they listen to mostly electronically produced music anyway, which doesn't make nearly as much demands on an audio system. And as you said in a previous post, many people have never heard an analog recording nowadays, or even good digital sound - only MP3's, etc. I am happy you and Bryon and everyone else are getting closer and closer to your goal in your own system, whatever you choose to call it. I just don't think it truly helps anyone else to call it "neutral." OK, once again I have rambled far too long, so I'll sign off now.