Absolute Neutrality - Possible? Do we even want it?

Mike

Mike

Audioshark
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I had a conversation yesterday with a designer from a well known amplifier company. We were talking about different designs and he said "at my company, we strive for and build to the goal of absolute neutrality." I told him, "I can't think of single audiophile except for JV who would walk into a high end story and say 'show me the amp with absolute neutrality.'"

We got to further discussing his definition of "absolute neutrality" and he said it was the opposite of highly colored amps, better yet, it was something which was "musically accurate when listening to detail, tonality and a sense of space."

Although no amp exists (that I know of) with absolute neutrality (whatever that may ultimately be).....is this really what audiophiles want?

I know JV from TAS was on a kick a few years ago (and he still might be) about coloration....and how coloration was BAD....I guess that's why I rarely agreed with his reviews.

This designer went on to say "every designer builds to his taste, like a master chef." Would this mean absolute neutrality is bland? Well, I guess I like a little spice in my food.

What do you think? Do you seek out gear/cables/speakers which are the most neutral or do you like a flavor?
 
This is similar to the "Accuracy over musicality" thread a few weeks ago. All I want from my stereo is to reproduce what was recorded, and I want the recording to reflect what was played. How is any designer of gear and cables going to know how to tweak the sound? They might prefer bass, and then emphasize that, but if it was not played, and then recorded, I do not want to hear it.

I guess accuracy and neutrality are the same thing. The converse of that is no distortion, either from the gear, or the recording.
 
This is kinda/sorta a touchy topic. I think many audiophiles would claim to want a neutral system if meaning that what goes in is what comes out. I don't know how many people want to stand on a soapbox and proclaim they loves them some colorations. So then I guess we need to discuss what type of colorations are *acceptable* vs. not acceptable. I know I don't want a slow syrupy sound, I don't want bloated bass, I don't want rolled off highs, I don't want brightness, I don't want any type of audible (to me) distortion, I don't want a thin sound, I don't want singers that sound like zombies (all bones and no flesh on the bones), and on and on.
 
Subjectively, absolute neutrality is what the last thing you loved had.

Objectively, is it a ruler flat frequency response. :D
 
I am after a realistically enhanced musical representation. Definitely not a neutral sound which I also don't believe is attainable in HiFi. If it was, it would be boring & most recorded material would probably be fatiguing.

When you pay for a venue ticket to see a live concert, is it neutral sounding? I don't think so.
 
I thought "Live" was the reference.

Having said that, I expect a good classical music or acoustic jazz recording to sound like the live performance. When it comes to popular music, I greatly prefer the sound of a studio recording to "live" which usually sounds like crap.
 
I find it difficult to define "live" sound because the venue performance is generally amplified too.
 
ive seen tons of live shows and play guitar and have a load of experience trying and owning different guitar amps . whether ss or tube the amps they play on are warm or overly detailed as well. an acoustic played without an amp is totally different sounding then an acoustic played through an amp. so i relate that to stereo gear as well. i want warm and inviting . i think alot of the too detailed setups are too revealing because not everything is recorded well. the warm "tubey" systems help with this and make a more comfortable listening environment for me. and yes on some things that are already warm thi can be too much of a good thing. but id still take that over the systems where i need to find things that sound good on it. and not listen to the things that dont.
neutral is not real imo. everytrhing is voiced to one side or the other. the companies that try to make neutral ,make boring to me.lol. just one guys opinion.:D
 
GaryProtein said:
I thought "Live" was the reference.

Having said that, I expect a good classical music or acoustic jazz recording to sound like the live performance. When it comes to popular music, I greatly prefer the sound of a studio recording to "live" which usually sounds like crap.
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Actually I would argue the master tape or digital hard drive copy is the reference. That's the limiting factor.
 
Even if the piece of gear is totally neutral, and when put together into a system of all neutral components (impossible) the room itself is going to have humps and bumps and dips just because of it's own acoustic properties and all the crap you have in it.

It may be a reasonable goal for a designer, but as a listener it is just not going to happen without some kind of room adjustment software, and even that is not going to fix every nuance of the room to get to true neutrality.
 
Steve said:
I find it difficult to define "live" sound because the venue performance is generally amplified too.
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If you are in the auditorium and the performers are on stage, even amplified, it is live. It often sucks sonically.

Many to most live performances are nothing more than performers playing through a big PA system. It bothers the hell out of me when they [now almost universally] do that at the opera and always with broadway productions. You never hear a real unamplified voice anymore. I know the performers were able to perform with out a PA a hundred years ago.
 
Myles B. Astor said:
Actually I would argue the master tape or digital hard drive copy is the reference. That's the limiting factor.
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OK, but how do you know what tape machine, pre-amp, power amp, or speakers you decide to put into that chain plays back the master tape or digital file with greatest neutrality?
 
GaryProtein said:
If you are in the auditorium and the performers are on stage, even amplified, it is live. It often sucks sonically.

Many to most live performances are nothing more than performers playing through a big PA system. It baithers the hell out of me when they [now almost universally] do that at the opera and always with broadway productions. You never hear a real unamplified voice anymore. I know the performers were able to perform with out a PA a hundred years ago.
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100% agreed, i cant count the number of times ive hated the sound of a show. live means nothing to me. some of it is real good but more often than not its not as good as the recorded versions.
 
Even though I’m not an audiophile, when I’m in the market for something, I tend to seek out gear that will give me musical detail and good or accurate tonality (in the sense of speakers and amps I add good staging to the list). So what does that mean to me? Well, as with cooking, you want a bit of seasoning in your food, just enough to bring out full flavor of the food without overpowering it. You want a balance. So I want the same in my gear.
I also look at it this way: “Colorization” is unavoidable anyway. In my opinion, there is no such thing as absolute neutrality in audio gear (or much else for that matter). Bringing some physics into it, anything is going to be colored to some respect by the materials used. As we know, all materials have a different set/count of electrons, atoms, etc. All react differently with each other and the environment they are put in. Thus something gets colored. That’s why we hear differences in speaker materials as an example. For instance, cloth ribbon vs beryllium vs titanium vs Kevlar vs etc. Design also factors into it of course. For example, you can take one brand of DAC chip and implement it in different ways and you will get different performance each time at the same time you can take 4 different brands, implement them the same way and all will perform the same, so while the material is the constant, the implementation is the variable that can have big impact.

There is one other factor to consider and that's the room in which the gear resides, unless you live in an anabolic chamber no matter how "absolute neutral" the gear is the room will be the variable color factor. So absolute neutrality is unobtainable in practicality.
 
dlb2 said:
So much for not being on your soapbox Mark. 

Sent from my HTC One.
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I'm not on mine, but I see plenty of other people are jumping on theirs! I figured the topic of Mike's thread would pretty much guarantee lots of posts. The only constant in this hobby is that we can't agree to agree about anything.
 
The more "neutral" your system sounds,in your room, the less albums you will play on your system. You also won't sit for very long in front of it either.
 
Petro85 said:
100% agreed, i cant count the number of times ive hated the sound of a show. live means nothing to me. some of it is real good but more often than not its not as good as the recorded versions.
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I'm a big fan of good studio recordings.

Aside from the better sonics, I don't have to be the chief "shoosher" in the audience. I hate when the audience makes noise, hums, taps their feet, their hands (especially if they have a ring on) against on the arms of their seat, cough a lot (STAY HOME!) or even breath too loudly. And let's not forgget the REALLY annoying person who wears perfume or cologne. YUCK! and there isn't anything you can do about that, they can't take it off, they just stink throughout the performance. Whenever that happens, I always remark loudly and repeatedly to Gail how much the person smells. Instead of doing s security check, they should give everyone a sniff and ban those people from the auditorium. A portion of the time, (especially older) people are deaf and don't realize others around them hear all their noise. I was recently at a concert where they were playing Dvorak's New World, and during the spritely moving parts, the guy two rows in front of me was thinking he was the freaking conductor and was tapping his hands against his armrest--and he had a big ring on his finger that made a hell of a lot of noise. During the intermission, I asked him if he could hear his ring banging on the chair and he said "no." I told him in no uncertain terms that EVERYONE ELSE COULD!

Sit down, shut up and don't move around in your chair.

Sorry for the rant, but I had to get this out of my system.
 
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