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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
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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
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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.
mrtennis
3,295 posts
 
mathematically speaking, it is not possible to assess a system's neutrality, bacause, the components and recordings are unknown variables, leading to a diophantine equation.

you can assess its resolution, and also get some idea of its inaccuracy.
unsound
7,336 posts
 
"can't miss judge Wapner."
cdc
1,850 posts
 
I used to say "flat frequency response". While that it important, there is such a wide variations in FR of the recordings I listen to, I couldn't get a flat FR unless I eq'd each recording.

There are some others like:

1) Consistent sound between drivers. I had a speaker with poly mid/woofer and metal tweeter. The drivers did not blend together at all and sound like two different speakers.

2) Dimensionality. As one reviewer wrote, when a system reproduced things spatially, you know it is working very well. Or words to that effect.

3) Transient response. For one thing, when you limit a driver in the frequency domain, you limit it in the time domain as well. I'm guessing that's one reason why speakers put a bump at 100 hz. It's to try to add the bass that gets lost from dampened transient response. It's why SET amps are so popular. Again, IMHO.
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