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How do you judge your system's neutrality?


Here’s an answer I’ve been kicking around: Your system is becoming more neutral whenever you change a system element (component, cable, room treatment, etc.) and you get the following results:

(1) Individual pieces of music sound more unique.
(2) Your music collection sounds more diverse.

This theory occurred to me one day when I changed amps and noticed that the timbres of instruments were suddenly more distinct from one another. With the old amp, all instruments seemed to have a common harmonic element (the signature of the amp?!). With the new amp, individual instrument timbres sounded more unique and the range of instrument timbres sounded more diverse. I went on to notice that whole songs (and even whole albums) sounded more unique, and that my music collection, taken as a whole, sounded more diverse.

That led me to the following idea: If, after changing a system element, (1) individual pieces of music sound more unique, and (2) your music collection sounds more diverse, then your system is contributing less of its own signature to the music. And less signature means more neutral.

Thoughts?

P.S. This is only a way of judging the relative neutrality of a system. Judging the absolute neutrality of a system is a philosophical question for another day.

P.P.S. I don’t believe a system’s signature can be reduced to zero. But it doesn’t follow from that that differences in neutrality do not exist.

P.P.P.S. I’m not suggesting that neutrality is the most important goal in building an audio system, but in my experience, the changes that have resulted in greater neutrality (using the standard above) have also been the changes that resulted in more musical enjoyment.
bryoncunningham
learsfool
1,215 posts
 
Hi guys - Cdc, Bryon, and Albert, you made some very interesting points, which I agree with as well. Cdc, on the photography issues, yes photographers also have heated debates over the merits of the latest digital technology vs. the older equipment. I have a cousin who is a professional photographer, and he likes to say that most serious photographers only use the digital cameras for going to a location and taking a great many pictures at once. Then they go back, look carefully over them, choose the exact shot they want, and go back to the location and set up their "real" camera, as he calls it. Of course, there are many professionals who have switched over to the all digital stuff and who would vehemently disagree. For myself, I would say that digital photography is FAR ahead of digital audio.
bryoncunningham OP
903 posts
 
To pick up on something Albert mentions in his post...

The analogy between photography and audio playback, although useful and interesting, has an significant limitation: The analogue to the photographer is NOT the audiophile, but rather the recording engineer. The recording engineer controls how the musical event is represented in the recording, just as the photographer controls how the visual event is represented in the photograph. The audiophile only controls how the RECORDING is represented by his system. That makes the audiophile the analogue of the gallery owner. Yikes!

The serious point is that the audiophile has some role in controlling the representation of the musical event, but a far lesser role, it seems to me, than the photographer has in controlling the representation of a visual event.
albertporter's avatar
albertporter
4,949 posts
 
Interesting comments by Learsfool and Bryoncunningham.

For myself, I would say that digital photography is FAR ahead of digital audio.
Agreed, and again because the music distribution companies limit what the public has access to whereas camera manufacturers MUST do their best for creators (photographers) who will move to better systems to please their clients and justify their fees.

The serious point is that the audiophile has some role in controlling the representation of the musical event, but a far lesser role, it seems to me, than the photographer has in controlling the representation of a visual event.

Well said by Bryon, and again the photographer has tools to create an ORIGINAL work, pretty much limited only by what he and the client are willing to spend. If the new Nikon and Canon 24 Million chip is not enough, there are large cameras with associated computer in tether that can create files so large that almost anything can be done with them (resolution wise).

The digital image business is driven by advertising and commercial and somewhat by portrait and wedding. When Apple makes billions offering MP3, then Sony, Phillips and others that have the power to offer ultimate digital music to us feel it would be pearls before swine.

That's a shame because I suspect the original high resolution digital file (in the studio) would stun us into silence in our complaints about the shortcoming of digital audio.

Sadly it seems we will not be offered that quality level and for that reason I purchase as many analog master tapes as possible. That's as good as it gets for us music lovers until something better is offered.

15 IPS half track probably compares in the analog photo world to the beautiful 8X10 Kodak and Fuji chromes from my Swiss made Sinar view camera. Most people have no concept how much resolution a piece of film this size contains.

Area is greater than an entire roll (36 exposures) of 35MM film, simply stunning.
muralman1
1,527 posts
 
I kept believing that digital didn't have it because folks like above said so, and their accumulative wisdom should be right. Then, I seriously started mining the information stored in the 16 bit CD. The deeper I dug, the more digital gave forth. Encouraged, I kept at it. Now, in just the last few days, I took my system into it's most revelatory status yet. I know my system is surely better than any vinyl system I have heard.

It is my opinion CDs are not the problem. It is the CD player that is at fault, with cabling stirring more sediment up. The digital player industry has been pushing one digital devil fix on us on another. Oversampling, upsampling, jitter, dithering, and filtering have battered the music signal beyond recognition as is attested to by previous posters compalints.

My source sets the picture for the system's playback. My speaker is able to express the whole of the picture. So, the source is where it is at. I use a transport that measures it's circuit in millimeters. It certainly does nothing to, "Improve," the signal on it's way out. The receiving DAC is just as hands off, though not quite as simple.

I will challenge anyone to detect any defect in this playback, one that has only been clocked, read, and played. The depth of material inserted into the 16 bit CD is simply phenomenal.
bryoncunningham OP
903 posts
 
Muralman - I know nothing about your system, and so I cannot comment on your claims, though I assume you recognize how provocative they are.

I myself am a digital only person, so I would like to believe the things you are saying about digital playback. However, having listened to a number of high quality analog systems, I have to confess that they have typically sounded wonderful, in all the ways that analog is famous for. My own view is that it is possible to make digital sound almost like analog, but it is a difficult thing to achieve.

Having said that, the relative merits of digital and analog playback is a topic that is very far afield from the substance of this thread, and so I will now return to my system and try to contain my analog envy. :-)
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