How do you judge your system's neutrality?

Trying to recapture live concert that I assumed was amplified through whatever equipment and speakers.... just how is anyone going to replicate that?

My son plays guitar, my wife piano, and daughter viola. Live music, and voices are the source for learning timbre and naturalness. I just attended a Christmas mens chorus held in a church with excellent acoustics. They were accompanied by a piano, and a Cello on one number. Occasionally the church organ would be used. Now, that is a a classroom for re-checking your understanding what real music sounds like.

There is no such thing as the absence of color in sound (and therefore, it logically follows, in sound reproduction). Otherwise music could not exist. The things you are specifically describing as "colorations" (intermodulation distortion, etc.) of course exist. But they are not the only "colorations" that exist in sound or it's reproduction; their absence does not prove the existence of "neutrality." Again, as Kijanki and I keep asking, how do you know what anything is "supposed" to sound like? There is no one answer to that question, and your assertion that there is is dumbfounding.

With great respect, Learsfool, I must say that I am similarly dumbfounded, but in the opposite direction. It has been said numerous times in numerous ways that the less colored (or more accurate or more neutral or more whatever comparable term you prefer) that the system is (including the room), the greater the likelihood that the presumably desirable colorations that were present in the original performance will be reproduced accurately, when averaged across a wide selection of well done recordings.

Bryon has proposed a methodology (assessing the degree to which the system makes different recordings sound different) that seems self-evident (to me and several others who have posted) as having a substantial degree of correlation with the likelihood that a given component or system will help achieve that end. Your own post of 12/4 seemed to recognize that, thereby recognizing the usefulness, or at least potential usefulness, of the methodology ("The bottom line here does not mean you have operationalized the term neutrality. It just means you have a better sounding system").

So why does the fact that it is difficult, in general, to precisely know what anything is supposed to sound like have any relevance in this discussion? And I repeat my challenge of yesterday: Is there any rewording of Bryon's original proposal, including perhaps substitution of some other word or words for "neutrality," that would allow everyone to converge?

Regards,
-- Al

Learsfool wrote:

It most certainly does NOT follow that just because I don't believe in neutrality, that therefore I don't believe in coloration! (The same goes for the "neutral room"/ "room coloration" thing). The only way this could possibly be true is within the context of your own personal definition, which is precisely what is under debate here.

To which Cbw replied:

If you believe that playback systems can add more or less coloration to a system, then you implicitly believe that a system can be more or less neutral, as defined here, whether you believe you believe that or not. You can't believe in speed (distance/time) and not believe in slowness (time/distance) and remain logically consistent.

I agree with Cbw that it is logically inconsistent to believe in coloration and not believe in neutrality, AS COLORATION AND NEUTRALITY HAVE BEEN DEFINED IN THIS THREAD, namely:

‘Coloration’: Additions or subtractions to the playback chain that conceal or corrupt information about the music.

‘Neutrality’: The degree of absence of coloration.

Although this definition of ‘neutrality’ is defined by its RELATION TO coloration, that does not make my reasoning, which employs those concepts, circular.

Learsfool - Our current disagreement seems to be that you object to my definition of 'neutrality.' But I agree with Cbw that my definition of neutrality is NOT “precisely what is under debate,” as you suggested. The focus of the debate, and my original post, is not the DEFINITION of 'neutrality,' but the OPERATIONALIZATION of 'neutrality', that is, the identification of a set of observable conditions that indicate the presence of neutrality. In your post dated 11/25, you seemed to agree with this characterization of the debate:

Thanks for the clarification, Bryon. I guess where we really disagree, then, is on whether you have in fact proposed "conditions that reliably indicate the presence of a characteristic," emphasis on reliably.

Here you seem to acknowledge that the central question of the thread, and the central focus of our disagreement, is the validity of my OPERATIONALIZATION of 'neutrality,' not the validity of my DEFINITION of 'neutrality.'

Of course, you are perfectly entitled to question the validity of my definition of neutrality as well. But it is inaccurate to treat my arguments for the OPERATIONALIZATION of neutrality as though they were arguments for the DEFINITION of neutrality. Doing so does create the appearance of circularity, but it is not a fair characterization of my arguments or my views.

Moving on to one of your concerns with my DEFINITION of neutrality:

So far, the only way you have defined your "neutrality" characteristic is by saying that it is an absence of some other characteristic, which you are calling "coloration." Frankly, I am not certain that this would pass muster as a scientific definition in the first place - I don't think it is accepted to define one thing solely as an absence of some other thing?

You are right I define neutrality in RELATION TO coloration. I don’t see the problem in this. To begin with, I never suggested that my definition was “scientific,” though I suppose my efforts to operationalize the concept could be considered an attempt to make it scientific. Acknowledging that, you are mistaken to suggest that a scientific concept cannot be defined by ABSENCE, as I have done with the definition of ‘neutrality.’ Here are some scientific concepts defined by absence:

Entropy: The ABSENCE of order in a thermodynamic system.
Vacuum: The ASBENCE of matter in a volume of space.
Absolute Zero: The ABSENCE of molecular activity.
Equilibrium: The ABSENCE of global system-level activity resulting from the balance of component-level forces.

In light of this, I do not see why defining ‘neutrality’ in terms of the ABSENCE of coloration is a problem, even if the standard of conceptual validity is a “scientific” concept.

Learsfool wrote:

Kijanki and I keep asking, how do you know what anything is "supposed" to sound like? There is no one answer to that question, and your assertion that there is is dumbfounding. A great many audiophiles calling themselves "objectivists" would stop far short of such an assertion. I fail to see how anyone could think of music or it's reproduction in such black and white terms.

This is a mischaracterization of my view. You are running two different things together:

(1) Is there a FACT OF THE MATTER about whether a system contains colorations (i.e. deviations from neutrality)?
(2) Is there a SINGLE way that a playback system is SUPPOSED TO sound?

My answer to (1) is Yes. That is what makes me an Objectivist about neutrality. But being an Objectivist about neutrality does not make me an Objectivist about ALL CHARACTERISTICS of musical playback. As it turns out, I am NOT an Objectivist about all characteristics of musical playback. Because of that, my answer to (2) above is No – there is not a single way that a playback system is supposed to sound. I hope you will see that my thinking on these topics is not as black and white as you have stated.

Al, I doubt you are dying to hear from me again, but what the hell.

It might be helpful if Bryon didn't include the word 'music' as being "more unique". He is actually talking about sound and the quality thereof, not music. Consider that some audio enthusiasts used to demo their systems with recording of jets taking off or the sounds made by trains on a track or their whistles.

It might be helpful if he didn't referring to one's 'music collection' becoming more diverse. The music itself, nor the number of extant recordings in one's collection, doesn't become more 'diverse', only the ability to discern the differences in the sound being delivered by the system can be enhanced by refining the quality of a systems components. The music collection doesn't become more diverse, only the ability to discern the amount of information in the pits and grooves becomes more acute. Perhaps that would increase his appreciation of some of the records in his collection - and that would be a good thing. Conversely one could discover that the more you could hear on some of your recordings the less you might appreciate listening to them ergo your usable collection might actually diminish.

I have always found it interesting, and inexplicable, why someone with the experience with audio, education, attention to detail, and command of the English language, would come up with such lame descriptions (IMHO of course - I realize others are willing to infer meanings that I will not) of what the effects of 'neutrality' are (as he uses the term) as if his observations related to 'music' when in fact they relate only to sound from an audio system, which IMHO, is better described when you relate how your system improves when you eliminate/reduce/alter 'colors' (a term far too inclusive for my tastes). He could talk about the effects of diminishing distortion's (kinda broad too), the effects of rise times and decays, the effect of tonal deviations from 'flat', the effect of different components synergy with any given speaker system, speaker system set up, room issues, ad infinitum, all of which add to or detract from some concept of neutrality/transparency/accuracy or sense of resolution.

I think the post/conversation might have been far more interesting to some of us if we were to discuss what an optimum system (on paper) might be and why, starting with the most important selection of your speakers system. Dynamic/cones. Electrostats. Horns. Planers. Line source, ribbon, cone, or electrostats. And working back to the amp and sources.

Obviously each speaker design and implementation produces different results. And that is where we will get into problems when we try to (assuming that we even do, although I think most experienced audiophiles do) recreate a home system which even begins to approach a sense of faithfulness to the recorded signal.

So, for me, I think it is not possible to change a few words in his post that would make it something I could agree with. If it were reduced to something like "As I improved the quality of my system's components, I found the sound became more clear, the sound was usually more enjoyable. In fact it sounds to me just as I would imagine it was recorded and I have found myself listening to more of my recordings, previously rejected for sonic reasons. I think my system is achieving a sense of reality that I can relate to."

Sorry I cannot be more accommodating. I'd like to be. :-)

Bryon wrote: "Is there a SINGLE way that a playback system is SUPPOSED TO sound?"

I was talking not about system sound but original performance sound. Did I miss this original performance? Neutral (or close) system exists - I don't question that (still no virtue to me). The problem I have is comparing its sound to, mentioned few times "original performance". How I can test for neutrality without knowing how it supposed to sound. To go to concert and wait for CD from this concert (assuming that recording engineer didn't touch it)? What Learsfool is trying to explain is that any instrument will sound differently in different halls on different days. My guitar sounds completely different in the summer (humid) and in the winter (dry). It sounds different with different picks and strings. It sounds completely different with new strings than with old strings. If I have Aural memory of guitar - is it my guitar or different guitar. There are hundreds of different guitars with different presence, projection, separation, sustain and tone. What Aural memory? What original performance?