How do you judge your system's neutrality?

Bryoncunningham, to expand further on your discussion about accuracy and neutrality: The perception of coloration is going to occur mainly in the midrange. This is due to our sensitivity to voices and instruments in the voice range, ie. 200-1000 Hz. And as discussed before, the overtones and undertones add the finishing touches to both the perception of neutrality and accuracy.

You mention the differences of systems missing the sub 30Hz information vs. systems that have it. We can hear those differences everyday comparing either a car stereo or TV to our hifi system. And everyone can notice the "fullness" of sound as I like to call it from our hifi's that is missing from lessor sound reproduction systems. And that is what we pay for in terms of cost and size of both our system and dedicated listening space. The ability to reproduce the entire audio spectrum faithfully requires not only transducers of significant size but also significant power and speed (speed requires power too).

Take for example the ability to reproduce the cannons in T's 1812 overture. I can imagine very few systems exist in homes that can leave one feeling a cannon was just fired in their living rooms. It takes tremendous power to reproduce that impulse of a cannon shot. One, if so inclined to play this song, is likely better off firing a real cannon in their living room at the appropriate times and resigning themselves to replacing a few windows. While this may seem like a shortcut or "giving up" as it were, it will avoid a lot of time, money and frustration in trying to build a hifi system that can meet all parameters of music- including cannon fire. Maybe for the sake of our neighbors and windows, save the real cannon fire for special occasions.

Fortunately, most of us audiophiles mature past playing the 1812 overture (I did so by my mid-20's) and move on to the more pragmatic issues of building a satisfying hifi system that lets us put aside all the technical hurdles in our minds and just enjoy the music.

Not all ATC's are neutral. The SCM 11 is described by John Marks as having a "smiley face" F-R. Although the 2nd order x-over could have be one reason they sound good.

Narrow dispersion such as Snell with +/-15 degree dispersion could reduce room effects and increase "neutrality".

Loss of transparency can come from a lot of things. Driver distortion, crossover distortion, delayed sounds that come from a heavy, underdamped, cabinet; heavy drivers that resonate, time delays between drivers. Flat F-R is only one component.

I disagree that a $50,000 system will always sound more enjoyable than a $300 system. Throwing a lot of money at audio doesn't guarantee good sound. I have found that while an expensive system can have more detail, bass, volume, on and on for the most part, I simply don't like how they sound. Maybe it's because they expose TOO much - the bad as well as the good. And that goes for the systems shwoing off its own arts as well. While I can appreciate all their audiophile traits, I simply don't like how most high end systems sound. Meaning if you just kick back and listen without being critical of every nit (how audiophile's are trained to listen) do you enjoy the experience.

When you limit a driver in the frequency domain, you also limit it in the time domain. I've heard it often, especially in bass drivers. When the bass driver is cut off over "X" frequency vs. running full range, bass becomes slow and lacks punch, timing, impact and rhythm.

When you limit a driver in the frequency domain, you also limit it in the time domain. I've heard it often, especially in bass drivers. When the bass driver is cut off over "X" frequency vs. running full range, bass becomes slow and lacks punch, timing, impact and rhythm.

This might be because the attack of the bass drum or toms is around 5 Khz. Slap of bass guitar is around 3 to 5 KHz.

See this explanation of how to achieve desired sounds.

Almarg wrote:

...if throughout this thread the word "accuracy" had been substituted for the word "neutrality," the amount of controversy and disagreement might have been significantly less.

And I replied:

...the concept of ‘neutrality’ fails to reduce to the concept of ‘accuracy’ without an undesirable consequence, namely, the diminishment of conceptual precision for situations that audiophiles commonly face.

Although I disagreed with Al’s substitution of ‘accuracy’ for ‘neutrality,’ his suggestion stuck with me, because something about it seemed to be essentially correct. This morning I got around to mulling it over, and I came up with a new proposal, one that I believe captures the spirit of Al’s suggestion while also preserving as much conceptual precision as possible. The proposal is:

'Accuracy' is a SECOND-ORDER CONCEPT that includes both 'resolution' and 'neutrality.'

A second-order concept is a concept that subsumes other concepts. In biology, for example, ‘genus’ is a second-order concept relative to the first-order concept ‘species.’ The relation between second-order and first-order concepts in science is analogous to the relation between sets and subsets in mathematics and logic. That is to say, first-order concepts are members of second-order concepts the way that subsets are members of sets.

To say that ‘accuracy’ is a second-order concept, then, is to say that ‘accuracy’ is a concept that includes, as its members, the concepts of ‘resolution’ and ‘neutrality.’ We can add this definition of 'accuracy' to our expanding lexicon on this thread:

RESOLUTION: The amount of information presented by a component or system.

NEUTRALITY: The degree to which a component or system is free from coloration.

TRANSPARENCY: The degree to which a component or system is sonically “invisible.”

And now…

ACCURACY: The degree to which a component or system is both resolving and neutral.

In my last post, I suggested that it is useful to think of a system’s accuracy in terms of information, specifically the information available on the recording vs. the information presented “at the ear.” Under that conceptualization, a system is accurate to the extent that it does not add, subtract, or alter information. My new proposal that ‘accuracy’ is a second-order concept that includes ‘resolution’ and ‘neutrality’ is implicit in the conceptualization of ‘accuracy’ in terms of information, since the diminishment of resolution or neutrality by the addition, subtraction, or alteration of information is NECESSARILY a diminishment of accuracy.

In my last post, I offered an example that I believe illustrated (1) that ‘neutrality’ and ‘accuracy’ are not identical concepts; and (2) that the concept of ‘neutrality’ does not reduce to the concept of ‘accuracy’ without the unwanted diminishment of conceptual precision. Al’s suggestion that we should substitute the word ‘accuracy’ for the word ‘neutrality’ contained an important insight, however, which is that the concepts of ‘neutrality’ and ‘accuracy’ are INTRINSICALLY RELATED. The current proposal is about exactly how they are related. My view is that the concepts of 'resolution' and 'neutrality' are first-order concepts that can be subsumed under the second-order concept of 'accuracy.' In other words, the concepts of 'resolution' and 'neutrality' CONSTITUTE the concept of 'accuracy' in audio. Because of this, the concept of 'accuracy' can be REDUCED TO the concepts of ‘resolution’ and ‘neutrality.’ Or:

‘ACCURACY’ = ‘RESOLUTION’ + ‘NEUTRALITY’

A note on the “reduction” of concepts: A concept A is reducible to a concept B to the extent that B has the same explanatory and predictive power in A’s theoretic domains. Like everything else in life, reduction is imperfect. But like many imperfect things, it is also valuable.

At the heart of Al’s suggestion that we substitute the term ‘accuracy’ for the term ‘neutrality’ is, I believe, the recognition that the use of the two concepts often amounts to the same thing. My new proposal is intended to be a refinement of that important insight.

A few words, by way of footnote, on how this discussion dovetails with earlier ones. In a previous post, I offered the following equation:

EQUATION #1
RESOLUTION + NEUTRALITY = TRANSPARENCY

This was meant to suggest that systems that were both highly resolving and highly neutral would also be highly transparent, NOT that the concept of ‘transparency’ is reducible to the concepts of ‘resolution’ and ‘neutrality.’

In this post, I have proposed that the concept of ‘accuracy’ can be reduced to the concepts of ‘resolution’ and ‘neutrality,’ represented by the equation:

EQUATION #2
‘ACCURACY’ = ‘RESOLUTION’ + ‘NEUTRALITY’

Unlike Equation #1, Equation #2 is a first and foremost a statement about concepts, though it entails that systems that are highly accurate are precisely the same systems that are highly resolving and highly neutral.

As you have probably noticed, resolution and neutrality are equated with TRANSPARENCY in Equation #1, whereas they are equated with ACCURACY in Equation #2. This raises the question: What is the relation between transparency and accuracy? My answer:

EQUATION #3
TRANSPARENCY = ACCURACY

Like Equation #1, Equation #3 is about characteristics of components and systems, NOT about the concepts that represent those characteristics. Equation #3 is meant to suggest that systems that are highly accurate are the same systems that are highly transparent. The concepts of ‘accuracy’ and ‘transparency,’ however, may not be reducible to one another, in light of the fact that they invoke different kinds of understanding and different metaphors. ‘Accuracy’ invokes our understanding of truthfulness (e.g., an accurate description) and perhaps measurement (e.g., an accurate scientific instrument). ‘Transparency’ invokes the metaphor of seeing through a medium (the audio system) to something behind it (the music). For this reason, the concept of ‘accuracy’ and the concept of ‘transparency’ may not be interchangeable, but I believe that those two concepts refer to the very same virtue in an audio system.