How do you judge your system's neutrality?

Interesting points, guys. Dgarretson, in general I agree with you - certainly a designer of a piece of audio equipment is not thinking of every timbre of every instrument when he "voices" his equipment. Though I do remember reading an interview with a very prominent current designer of an extremely high-end speaker where he said that he started out by trying to design one that made his guitar sound right, which was interesting, and it grew from there. I am sure that each individual designer does have a definite idea about how he wants the equipment to sound, however, and it is in this sense that I was speaking of (actually, I don't think I used the term - when I referred to the negatives of digital processing, I was referring to unintended effects that the designers are still trying to solve). This is part of the reason I argue that there can be no such thing as true "neutrality" in a piece of audio equipment - each is "colored" in this way by it's designer.

Bryon, I think we will have to agree to disagree. I will point out a flaw in your water analogy, though. With water, although all sources are indeed contaminated, we can identify the definite impurities, and there is no debate on the subject, because science call tell us what truly pure water would be like. We just don't have the technology to remove all of the impurities yet, as you said. This is certainly not the case with a piece of audio equipment. In high end audio, there will always be debate over what is a "coloration" and what is not. There is no way to know what this "neutrality" would be/sound like, since there is no single "absolute sound" to measure your "neutrality" with/against. All anyone can do is use their ears to decide whether the piece of equipment is an improvement towards our own individual ideal sound or not. Of course, there are those who don't listen and only go by the specs, but such a person wouldn't be following this particular thread anyway, I wouldn't think....

With water, although all sources are indeed contaminated, we can identify the definite impurities, and there is no debate on the subject, because science call tell us what truly pure water would be like.

Actually, I think the water analogy is pretty apt here. Science rarely, if ever, delivers absolute truth -- send a bunch of water samples around to different labs, and you get different answers and those answers will all come with error bars. And, as you say, we can't filter out everything in water any more than we can build perfect audio components.

But just because science can't deliver absolute truth (any more than an engineer can deliver a perfectly neutral audio component) should we throw away the whole concept of science?

Cbw723, I can't extend my experience of close convergence between modded analog & digital sources to downstream components. I can only report that mods to downstream components were IMO technically sound and moved the system closer to neutrality as I sense neutrality. The leap of faith necessary to believe this is whether you accept that piece parts made by Duelund, Mundorf, ClarityCap, V-Cap, VSE Superregulators, etc., result in superior performance or merely alternative colorations. However dropping some of these exotic pieces into standard commercial designs is if nothing else an interesting test of the subjectivist viewpoint.

Learsfool wrote:

With water, although all sources are indeed contaminated, we can identify the definite impurities, and there is no debate on the subject, because science call tell us what truly pure water would be like...This is certainly not the case with a piece of audio equipment.

I disagree that we cannot identify definite colorations in audio components (the analogue of the "definite impurities" in the water analogy). I believe there are uncontroversial examples of coloration in audio equipment. I mentioned one earlier in this thread: Intermodulation distortion. As you no doubt know, when two frequencies are fed into the input of an amplifier, the sum and the difference of those two signals will appear at the amplifier's output. So if a 1K and a 10K signal are fed into the input, an 11K (the sum) and a 9K (the difference) signal will appear at the output. That is a coloration of the original signal. And since intermodulation distortion is harmonically unrelated to the input frequencies, it is not a euphonic coloration.

The art of identifying and removing colorations from audio equipment may not be as advanced as the science of removing contaminants from water supplies, but the idea that colorations in audio components are unobservable and unmeasurable is, I believe, an exaggeration of the limitations of audio design.

Learsfool wrote:

There is no way to know what this "neutrality" would be/sound like, since there is no single "absolute sound" to measure your "neutrality" with/against.

I agree that there is no "absolute sound" against which we can evaluate a system’s neutrality. But that does not mean we are left with nothing with which to evaluate neutrality. What we are left with are INDICES OF NEUTRALITY, i.e., characteristics that covary with neutrality. These indices might include measurements of variables we know to be colorations, like intermodulation distortion. (BTW, I do NOT have the view that you can judge a component by its specs alone). Other indices of neutrality might include one or more of the attempts to operationalize neutrality contained in this thread.

Incidentally, the inaccessibility of the “absolute sound” in audio is precisely analogous to the inaccessibility of “absolute reality” in science. There is no "absolute reality," accessible to human beings, against which we can evaluate the truth of theories. But that does not mean we must abandon the concept of ‘truth,’ since theories can be evaluated by INDICES OF TRUTH like coherence, explanatory and predictive power, and intertheoretic corroboration. These characteristics covary with truth, and so they are the measure of the truthfulness of scientific theories.

In my view, the case is almost exactly the same with judging neutrality. There is no "absolute sound," accessible to the audiophile, against which we can evaluate the neutrality of a system. But that does not mean we must abandon the concept of ‘neutrality,’ since systems can be evaluated by INDICES OF NEUTRALITY. My original post is a proposal about one possible index of neutrality.

Very interesting thoughts, Bryon, points on the water analogy well taken. By the way, I did not mean to suggest that science or truth should be thrown out, and I am not quite sure what exactly about my post suggested that, though clearly it must have to more than one person. I also don't mean to suggest that you are left with nothing to evaluate your system with. Speaking of distortions, by the way, I should point out that there are many types of distortions that audiophiles greatly disagree on. Distortions are not necessarily bad - some of them occur quite naturally in live acoustic music, and the attempt to remove them digitally results in some very unnatural sounding timbres sometimes. Yet some would claim that the sound produced in this way is more "transparent," which someone else earlier in this thread suggested was another term for "neutral." I have heard many a dealer or audiophile brag about a digital system that they thought was so "transparent" or "neutral," and it turned out to be an extremely "analytical" and lifeless sounding system indeed. I realize that this is almost certainly not what you are talking about in your post, I just bring it up to point out another reason why I don't think you will ever have widespread agreement on a concept of neutrality - distortions are a whole other can of worms. I just carefully re-read your original post, and the subsequent one where you defined "neutrality" and I still don't think that just because 1) individual pieces sound more unique, and 2) your music collection sounds more diverse, that this necessarily leads to the conclusion that your system is more "neutral". IMO you are presenting a "begging the question" type argument. At least I think that is the logic term I mean, I would have to look it up to be sure. Anyway, it has been an interesting discussion, very thought-provoking.