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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
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,432 posts
 
Is 8x10 suitable for any task? Can you use it for late afternoon sports pictures? AFAIK depth of field is very low requiring high F stops. I remember that A. Adams was running "F/64 Club". Such apertures require long exposures making it more suitable for landscape or portrait photography. Cost of the lens with low aberration at such apertures has to be very high not to mention size of the gear and processing. Pictures also cannot be "Photoshopped"
without high resolution scanner for 8x10 negatives.

Price and practicality are important to me. There might be analog TVs that are way better than best HDTV but in what is available to me (Best Buy) is the other way around.
albertporter's avatar
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albertporter
4,949 posts
 
Kijanki,

The question began as a query as to how I achieved the large images shown at CES some years ago. I answered the question truthfully.

I'm a professional photographer and I justified my rates by overcoming very difficult technical obstacles. I'm sure you're not the only one who appreciates the speed and ease that digital provides but that was not the question.

As for lenses that operate at F 64, my camera had all bench matched lenses from Sinar, Switzerland.

They also manufacture electronic lighting which was employed for for nearly 100% of the images I produced. A single pop at 1/60 of a second could easily expose 8X10 film at F 90.

As always there are tools for whatever level of quality is required.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,432 posts
 
Albert - thank you. What about large size digital sensors - how do the compare to same size film quality? Price of sensors and electronic will perhaps go down, but lenses will always cost more than amateurs (like me) are willing to spend.
albertporter's avatar
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albertporter
4,949 posts
 
What about large size digital sensors - how do the compare to same size film quality?

None of my customers so far are willing to pay enough for me to move above the 24 million pixel Nikon-Canon category. I suspect the Nikon (their best is slightly better than the Canon) would easily compare with Hasselblad 2.25" square and maybe approaching 4X5 depending on which film and lens were used on the 4X5.

Phase One has a back that does 60 million pixel captures. Approx. 180 MB files with a 12 stop dynamic range at 8 bit. Basic kit starts about $45,000.00. That would defeat 4X5 (in my opinion) but have not tested it.

Technology is available to displace even the best 8X10 and 11X14 inch film cameras, but at super high price. Here's a superb example that none of us could afford but I'm certain is current state of the art (smile).

Ultimate digital camera
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,432 posts
 
I bought recently Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1 (a decent amateur camera) knowing that colors produced by the sensor are a little off (shifted toward green). To my surprise it is only in JPEG while RAW is pretty accurate. In-camera processing somehow makes colors unnatural. The same might be true for digital audio. I read Stereophile review of Meridian CDP that uses different filtering scheme (non-apodizing filter) that better reproduces transients. It is not as simple as just turning off oversampling and getting rid of digital filter calling it NOS - otherwise everybody would do that, including Meridian. Once we have to reproduce sinewave at 10kHz (harmonics) in 4 points (44.1kHz) it will be ugly no matter what scheme we prefer.
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