How do you judge your system's neutrality?

Wow. Fascinating posts, Bryon. However, ultimately I remain unconvinced by your argument, though it is an impressive statement of your case. Just to take a couple of for instances, first the EQ issue. Surely if a system is very "neutral," "transparent," or "accurate," it would not need any EQ? It seems to me that by applying EQ, you are not faithful or truthful either to the recording or the musical event that it represents. Again, IMO you are merely changing the sound of your system (and the recording, of course) so that it represents your personal sonic priorities. There is also the "flat frequency response" thing we have already discussed in this thread - no concert hall has a flat frequency response - this simply doesn't sound good for the live event, so to try to create it in your system seems pointless (and usually results in a very lifeless/soulless sound, IME). The room correction issue is interesting, too - again, what is the standard that you are trying to correct the room to? I don't think any two audiophiles would perfectly agree on this. To be clear, I am not suggesting that room correction is worthless, indeed these systems can make a big difference; I just wonder - how do you know when it has been corrected? Again, only you can answer that for yourself, and your answer may be very different from any other given audiophile's. The "lower noise floor" is also a topic of much division among audiophiles - take my brother's Nottingham turntable, a line which is well known for it's "black background." To my ears, the sacrifice made here to attain this is the removal of too much of what some call "low level information," for example a loss of much of the sense of the sound of the actual musical event/space that was recorded. Live music does not exist in a vacuum, even in a very dead recording studio - the sound of the space is an integral part of the music. This is particularly noticeable in moments of silence within the music. As John Cage famously demonstrated with his piece 4'30", silence is never really silence in a concert hall.

Sorry about the rambling - I'm under the weather, and never was the clearest writer - your posts are much better than mine in that regard! I just wanted to share the thoughts that came to me as I read your interesting posts. I would be particularly interested in your answer to my first question about the EQ issue, as it seems to me that if true "neutrality", "accuracy", and "transparency" could exist in a system, EQ would be completely unnecessary, and I was very surprised to see you mention it in this context.

Learsfool wrote:

…it seems to me that if true "neutrality", "accuracy", and "transparency" could exist in a system, EQ would be completely unnecessary, and I was very surprised to see you mention it in this context.

Learsfool – I did not mention EQ in the context of our ongoing discussion about neutrality, accuracy, or transparency. If you look again at my post, you will see that my mention of EQ was in the context of a reply to Muralman’s suggestion that it is difficult to identify the contribution of each component in an audio system, and that systems that are complex suffer from this more than ones that are simple. Nowhere in Muralman’s posts, or in my reply to him, is there mention of neutrality, accuracy, or transparency. Muralman’s question was not about neutrality, accuracy, or transparency. But I found his question valid and interesting in its own right, and so I took the time to answer it as best I could.

It is worth mentioning that I never suggested that my own system is especially resolving, neutral, accurate, or transparent. I value each of those characteristics, and I would like to believe that I have achieved some measure of each of them. But I have left the specifics of my own system out of the discussion up until my last post, because I didn’t want the conversation to become a comparison of different equipment, which there is an abundance of on Audiogon. I broke my silence about the specifics of my own system only because Muralman brought up my system in his post as an illustration of his concern about complexity. It was in an attempt to answer his concern that I described some of the particulars of my system. But I do not regard my system as a model of any particular sonic characteristic. I mention this because you wrote the following:

Surely if a system is very "neutral," "transparent," or "accurate," it would not need any EQ?

This makes it sound as though I have characterized my system as “very ‘neutral,’ ‘transparent,’ or ‘accurate.’” I have not.

This brings me to your comment about the incompatibility of (1) valuing system neutrality, accuracy, or transparency; and (2) the use of EQ in the context of room correction. You wrote:

It seems to me that by applying EQ, you are not faithful or truthful either to the recording or the musical event that it represents.

I disagree with this. The use of EQ for room correction is usually a matter of using notch filters to suppress room modes. As you no doubt know, room modes are frequencies that result in standing waves, the volume of which can easily be exaggerated by 10dB or more. If left uncorrected, standing waves make music sound bloated, uneven, and slow. Standing waves can be corrected either through room treatments or through EQ. For those who do not have a dedicated room (like me), the use of EQ for room correction can be a very effective option for controlling the destructive effects of room modes.

The use of EQ, in the way just described, is not a move away from system neutrality, accuracy, or transparency. In fact, it is the opposite, as anyone who has heard the effects can testify to. The result of suppressing the room modes in my system made the system more neutral, more accurate, and more transparent. The measure of this is not merely the flatter frequency response achieved under 200Hz. The measure of this is the perception of the listener.

Your comment that “Surely if a system is very ‘neutral,’ ‘transparent,’ or ‘accurate,’ it would not need any EQ?” seems to reveal an assumption that:

THE SYSTEM = THE EQUIPMENT

If we substitute “the equipment” for “system” in your question, then it would read: “Surely if the equipment is very ‘neutral,’ ‘transparent,’ or ‘accurate,’ it would not need any EQ?” I would agree with this rhetorical question IF I believed that the system = the equipment. But I believe that:

THE SYSTEM = THE EQUIPMENT + THE ROOM

That is why, in a previous post, I wrote:

…it is useful to conceptualize accuracy in terms of information, specifically, the information available at the source vs. the information presented at the ear. (I say “at the ear,” rather than “at the speaker,” since the room, and your listening position in it, are ultimately part of the system).

The alteration of the signal for the purposes of room correction seems like a deviation from system neutrality, transparency, and accuracy ONLY IF you believe that the system = the equipment. If the room is part of the audio system, then changes to the signal in the equipment do not necessarily result in less neutrality, transparency, or accuracy AT THE EAR. And that is where it counts.

Hi Bryon - obviously, the room has a big effect on how the system sounds, I am not arguing this at all, in fact I believe I said this in my post, and I also said that I agreed that room correction systems can make a huge difference. My point was that "changes to the signal in the equipment," even assuming they are only via room correction still do not necessarily result in either more or less "neutrality", "transparency", or "accuracy". I have heard "room correction" in an enthusiastic dealer's showroom that resulted in a very dead, lifeless sound as well -it depends on how it is applied, which depends on who is applying it. Unless I am very much mistaken, it is not possible to remove all of the effects of room nodes and other similar acoustic phenomena, no matter how good the room correction system is. These phenomena are a part of what gives all great concert halls their individual character, for instance.

Sorry for misunderstanding that your EQ comment only applied to room correction, by the way. I was also not speaking specifically of your system, the question was meant as a general one. Many audiophiles do use EQ for many other purposes besides room correction (I do not), as has been mentioned in this thread, with posted links about it, and I was asking your opinion on these uses as well. I would think that almost all of these other uses of EQ would be a violation of your "neutrality" principles, if I understand them correctly (for instance, wanting to make a violin's extreme high register sound less harsh), would they not?

Gee, I was only gone for a week or so and I come back to find this thread still active. But it does seem to have morf'd into something completely different from the original post where in, as I interpreted it, Bryon was informing us that he had discovered by increasing the quality of his components he was hearing far better replications of the recordings he was playing and he could hear differences that had previously lost. No problem there! Most anyone willing to be called an audiophile would agree with that - we've all been there/done that.

Then we argued at great length the meaning(s) of the words 'neutrality', 'transparency', 'resolution', and lastly (thanks to Al) a word, which for me is easier to grasp, 'accurate'. Despite noble attempts, perhaps even Herculean, by Bryon I doubt that any of us really agree on the subtle differences if any (I can tell by deeply gazing into my crystal ball).

Now we have moved on to discussing acceptable synergy, or attempts at synergy, which are consonant with recreating a feeling of being in the presence of live music or in the studio listening to the music over the studio monitors as heard by the recording engineers.

Sort of a fundamental objective of most audiophiles. One group wants to hear a replication of the sounds of live music, the other group wants to hear as closely as possible what is in the pits and grooves. And, I think, we agree that these are for the most part not mutually achievable and most audiophiles make a chose between these goals when setting up or, more likely, enhancing an extant system.

Some folks think you can only get there with tubes. The 'live' group I think.

Some folks think you can only get there thru SS stuff. The fidelity to the recording group I think.

Some folks think you can only get there thru Analog.
Some folks think you can only get there thru HiRes digital. The divergence seems endless. I'm a true heretic. I'm into playing with and fine tuning with tubes! I'm standing in line to be burned at the stake.

Which leads me to ask, assuming that we have discussed adequately all of the philosophical issues, how does the aspiring audiophile utilize anything in this post to help him achieve his goals?

Al, a degree perhaps, but in what. :-)