How do you judge your system's neutrality?

How do you know how it supposed to sound? Sitar from Northern India sounds completely different than Sitar from southern India. How do you know?

Bryon wrote: "By having heard one."

That's the problem - by having heard one where? In small humid room or big concert hall. What brand of Sitar?

As for neutrality being a virtue - Do you think that person who likes more bass than neutral should force himself to listen at home the way he doesn't like (neutral). If I cannot hear treble as well as when I was young - am I allowed to get brighter system. Overall result might be neutral but to who's standard (since I cannot hear treble in live performance). Whole issue is very foggy. I can only say what sounds good to me. As Learsfool mentioned sound of instrument in sound-dead studio is colored by recording engineer (therefore not neutral). Why do I have to adhere to this. Some instruments like cello have very complicated radiating pattern (only backwards at 300Hz I think). Can you imagine what mess recording engineer can make here. At the concert sound is far from perfect and different each time. Open air concert is way different than small auditorium etc.

I think you hit a homer there, Kijanki. Hearing is an issue. I know a reviewer who has a high frequency deficiency. Music that is loud and dynamic is a good thing. Accuracy is not. Amazingly, my hearing is very good. I want sound at it's proper levels still.

Learsfool wrote:

Basically, I do not believe that "neutrality" can possibly exist at all, whether we are talking about a single piece of equipment, the entire system as per your definition, or in live music...

Learsfool - What do you think of Al's comment:

Consider a system purchased at Walmart for a total system price of $300, in comparison with say a $50K system such as some Audiogoner's have. I don't think anyone here will disagree as to which one will provide better and more enjoyable sound, and I don't think that anyone here will disagree as to which one is more neutral/accurate/etc.

Do you not believe that a $50K system is more neutral than a $300 Walmart system? And conversely, do you not believe that the $300 system has more coloration?

It is important to note that the last two questions must be answered the same way. That is to say, if you do not believe in neutrality, then YOU DO NOT BELIEVE IN COLORATION. That is because neutrality has been defined on this thread as the (degree of) ABSENCE OF COLORATION.

Colorations are additions or subtractions to the playback chain that conceal or corrupt information about the music. If you believe that coloration does not exist, then what is intermodulation distortion? What is the resonance of a speaker cabinet? What is crosstalk? In my view, they are additions to the playback chain that conceal and corrupt information about the music. That is to say, they are colorations. And if colorations exist, then neutrality, defined as the (degree of) absence of coloration, exists.

Learsfool wrote:

There is no such thing as a neutral room.

If you believe this, then you believe that there is no such thing as ROOM COLORATION. Then what is a room mode? What is flutter echo? What is comb filtering? In my view, they are additions and subtractions to the playback chain that conceal and corrupt information about the music. That is to say, they are colorations. And if colorations exist, then neutrality exists.

Learsfool wrote:

Bryon wrote "The success of room correction relies on the technology involved and how it is implemented." This completely ignores the human ears setting up and/or listening to the result of the technology…

I was not ignoring the human element. I meant that to be part of “implementation.” ‘Implementation’ can refer to the PHYSICAL DEVICES that perform some function or the ACT of performing some function, presumably by a person. I meant for both to be included.

Learsfool wrote:

Now, let us say you replace very high quality preamp A with very high quality preamp B, keeping everything else the same. How will you know which one is more "neutral"? I submit that you can't. But you can know which one makes the system sound better to you. And I would also guess that 100 audiophiles that listened to this comparison would probably split close to 50/50 on which one did sound better, and that there would be many different reasons why each made his choice.

One of the advantages to my operationalization of ‘neutrality’ is that forming judgments about neutrality does not require us to be able to arrive at a consensus about which is the better component in an A/B test, which as you point out, is often difficult and sometimes impossible. It only requires us to arrive at a consensus about which component makes individual pieces of music sound more unique and a collection of music more diverse. Perhaps that would be a difficult consensus to achieve as well, but I suspect it is far more realizable than getting audiophiles to agree on which component is "better" in any given A/B test.

And if a consensus were reached about which component was more neutral in an A/B test, it does not follow that the more neutral component is the "better" component, since there are other sonic virtues that are, and should be, considered when evaluating components.

Learsfool wrote:

I think your "neutrality" concept/operationalization falls apart, despite your VERY good arguments - it requires that there is ultimately one answer.

Yes. That is what it means to be an Objectivist.

Kijanki wrote:

Do you think that person who likes more bass than neutral should force himself to listen at home the way he doesn't like (neutral). If I cannot hear treble as well as when I was young - am I allowed to get brighter system?

You are allowed to do as you like. It is not for me to tell anyone how to listen to music. I think if you were to read my posts on this thread you would not find a single comment suggesting that someone else SHOULD listen in a certain way. I have, however, made arguments about the value of neutrality. This may seem like a contradiction, but it is not. That is because, while I am an Objectivist about neutrality, resolution, and accuracy, I am a Subjectivist about audiophile values. I do not believe that there is one "right" way to listen, but I do believe that there are more neutral, resolving, and accurate ways to listen.

As far as your comment about compensating for your high frequency hearing loss with a brighter system, the issue there is exactly analogous to the use of EQ in a system to compensate for room effects. In a previous post, I wrote:

[The] question is whether the use of EQ is NECESSARILY a deviation from neutrality. The answer is: It depends on which level of organization you are talking about. By definition, the use of EQ is a deviation from neutrality AT THE LEVEL OF THE COMPONENT. But it is not necessarily a deviation from neutrality AT THE LEVEL OF THE SYSTEM, where "the system" includes the room and your listening position in it. That is because the judicious use of EQ could compensate for room effects that are themselves deviations from neutrality. For example, if the room contains a lot of hard surfaces and is bright, EQ’ing the treble could result in a SYSTEM that is more neutral, even though, at the component level, you have made the signal less neutral.

Analogously, in the case of compensating for your high frequency hearing loss with a brighter system, I would say: That "compensation" is itself an attempt to achieve a measure of neutrality in the system, by removing the midrange and bass "coloration" created by your loss of high frequencies. But in your case, "the system" no longer stops at your ears - it INCLUDES your ears, along with the details of your hearing loss.

Bryon wrote: "I do not believe that there is one "right" way to listen, but I do believe that there are more neutral, resolving, and accurate ways to listen."

And I do believe that there is "perfect" woman out there but I'm not interested.

It is very subjective. I can always find somebody who will like sound of your Walmart system more (and call it more neutral/natural sounding). There is a few reasons for that. Some say clear=sterile and resolution=analytic. I read opinion that instruments should not sound separately but together. Some people don't like strong dynamics. There is no right or wrong here. Listener is a part of the system as room is and there is no escape from that. Who will be the judge? The proper question is not whether it sounds neutral (how to know that?) but rather if sound is pleasant, involving etc.
Can musical presentation that is "uninvolving" be more neutral? Presentation can often be converted to involving one by spicing frequency extremes or adding a little bit of distortion. My Benchmark DAC1 was praised by studio engineers and often called by people sterile and uninvolving. Studio engineers made once experiment in the studio recording guitar live and playing thru different DACs (similar price range). Benchmark was the most accurate but people liked other DACs more.

Defining neutrality reminds me TV discussion on the subject of "good taste" where serious people tried to define it (it does not exist).

Bryon, I have some more thoughts on the "excess contrast" issue, but in thinking about it, I realized there were some holes in my understanding of the operationalization (is that a word?) itself:

1) In the original post, you mention instrument timbres specifically sounding more distinct from one another, and then go on to say whole songs and albums sounded more unique and your collection, more diverse. Is that all a consequence of the change in timbres, or were there other characteristics that contributed to the uniqueness/diversity? (If it is reducible to timbre, then wouldn't the operationalization of neutrality be, "Instrument timbres sound more distinct?" And then wouldn't criteria #1 and #2 be consequences of increased neutrality rather than standards by which we identify it?)

2) Is criterion #2 a consequence of, in whole or in part, criterion #1? If so, and in whole, then a similar reduction might be possible. If not, or only in part, what are the additional characteristics that contribute to #2?