How do you judge your system's neutrality?

it seems there exists a dichotomy--enjoment of music and analysis for its own sake. one may satisify the need for achievment (analysis to achieve neutrality) while the other may attain pleasure for a liatener.

Dgarretson wrote:

…my view is that analytic & sterile err at the opposite extreme of unresolving warmth. Both kinds of extremes are colorations and as such, represent deviations from neutrality.

I completely agree with this.

And:

My personal preference (and also my perception of neutrality) is to have as much warmth & embodiment as can be obtained without compromising transparency, high resolution, and realistic pitch & timbre. I suppose this reveals a romantic bias. However merely reversing the same adjectives in order of importance would tend to indicate an analytic bias. Regardless of one's starting point on a scale of preference, neutrality tends to occur toward the middle. For me "better" is about finding that middle while doing a bit more of everything right at both extremes of the scale.

If I were to state my personal preferences for the playback of recorded music, this would be it.

Wow - I have been unable to read/post here for a while now due to the busy holiday season, and I see that I have missed quite a bit! I would like to comment on a couple of different things here.

Mrtennis - I would like to give you an example of a different sort of analysis that can greatly increase your enjoyment of music, and this would be the study of music theory, particularly the study of different musical forms. Your appreciation and enjoyment of the genius behind say a Bach fugue, or a Mozart symphony will be greatly enhanced by the study of these forms. Or say you prefer jazz - there are several basic forms one can study here that will yield much greater appreciation for the art of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis, or whoever your favorites are. A great book I like to recommend, which is written in terms a "layman" can understand, is the composer Aaron Copland's book What To Listen For In Music. I do not know of a better introduction to these sorts of topics for the listener than this excellent work. Many audiophiles devote an amazing amount of time studying electronics, etc.; musical forms are a much less complex and easier to understand subject, and this sort of study is much more directly beneficial to your enjoyment of whatever you are listening to.

Bryon, your preference/perception discussion is interesting. I would go a little farther than dgarretson's response and say that perception is always going to be hugely influenced by preference for each individual listener. This is what my brother was driving at in his taste/quality comment. It is all too easy, no matter how experienced the listener is, for taste to influence the judgement of quality - perception cannot be totally separated from preference, even if one is trying to be as objective as possible. The main thing I would disagree with in your argument would be where you state that the more listener expertise increases, the more preference will decrease. I would go so far as to state the opposite. The more one's listening skills improve, the more this will help determine and reinforce what one's preferences are. This has been the case with my own explorations of the different options in high end audio. The more I learn, the clearer and stronger my preferences become. You seem to be arguing that the more experienced listeners will gravitate towards the same idea of "neutrality," whereas I would argue that the opposite would be the case. I think the recent discussion between dgarretson and muralman and kijanki on preferences bears this out. Ultimately, your "neutrality" is a subjective, personal judgement, no matter how well we can objectively identify different types of colorations.

Learsfool, as one progressively raises the bar in the hobby through a process of acquiring or hearing successively improved components, what is the nature of the "reinforcement of preference" that you propose is occuring? Assuming that break-throughs in technology and improvements in price/performance ratio are actually obtainable and that one welcomes this process, is the result of change merely to cement the listener to a prior preference of coloration, or to liberate him to reassess and refine preference in the context of a newly available perceptions? Seems to me that the very notion of progress implies change in the latter sense.

…perception cannot be totally separated from preference, even if one is trying to be as objective as possible.

Learsfool – I agree with this. My view is that, although perception and preference are always commingled to some extent, they can nevertheless be distinguished by expert listeners. There may be no such thing as "preference-less" perception, but I believe that it is possible, and often useful, to form judgments about perception that are MINIMALLY INFLUENCED by preference. I know that you are a professional musician. I would imagine that, if you play in an orchestra, you must have had experiences that require you form judgments about perception while ignoring your own preferences, as for example, when you disagree with the preferences of the conductor.

The main thing I would disagree with in your argument would be where you state that the more listener expertise increases, the more [variability in] preference will decrease. I would go so far as to state the opposite. The more one's listening skills improve, the more this will help determine and reinforce what one's preferences are.

I agree with this, if “preferences” is interpreted as “priorities.” In other words, I believe that, although audiophiles have largely similar PREFERENCES, they have largely different PRIORITIES. This is not merely a semantic difference, as I hope the following will show...

Here is a list of playback system characteristics, in no particular order:

-Resolution
-Realistic dynamics (macro- and micro-)
-Tonal balance
-Low Noise
-Realistic transients (attack, sustain, decay)
-Neutrality
-Transparency (to the music)
-Accuracy (to the software)
-Scale
-Coherence
-Warmth
-Realistic instrument timbres
-Extension at the frequency extremes (high and low)

It seems to me that the vast majority of audiophiles would PREFER to have as many of the characteristics on this list as possible, with one or two possible exceptions, like neutrality. But budgets are limited, and no system at any budget can do everything, so audiophiles are forced to PRIORITZE the value of these characteristics for themselves. And differences in audiophile priorities results in different approaches to system building.

It is important to point out that very few of the characteristics on the list above are mutually exclusive, in theory. Perhaps neutrality and warmth are mutually exclusive in theory, but even this is arguable, particularly if we think of warmth the way Dgarretson suggested, namely, as embodiment. The characteristics above are mutually exclusive only in practice, because of limitations of design and budget. But the fact that so few (or possibly none) of the characteristics that audiophiles value are mutually exclusive, in theory, highlights the fact that different approaches to system building among audiophiles is more attributable to different PRIORITIES than to different PREFERENCES.

This brings me to the question of “taste.” I think that, if “taste” is interpreted as A SET OF IDEAL PLAYBACK CHARACTERISTICS like the list above, then audiophiles can, and do, often agree. But if “taste” is interpreted as A SET OF JUDGMENTS ABOUT WHAT IS MOST VALUABLE when having to choose among those characteristics, you are quite right that audiophiles will never agree.