The Use of the Word "Neutral" in Audio

mep

mep

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I hardly know how to begin this thread because the word "neutral" as used in audio seems to have different connotations to different people. It can have a positive meaning and it can have a negative connotation. Some people might even think the term "neutral" has a pejorative aspect to it.

In an ideal state, I think the word "neutral" would mean that a component doesn't pass on colorations of its own and merely amplifies or reproduces the signal it's fed. Since that is a motherhood and apple pie statement, many people would stand up and salute that flag pole if it was only true. However, we all know that nothing is perfect in this world in general and audio in particular. Every single piece of gear has colorations and some more than others.

I'm beginning to wonder if some people are confusing "neutral" with a sound that I would describe as being bleached out. This is the sound of components that are "squeaky clean" sounding but yet are harmonically threadbare and don't offer much in the way of midbass punch (even if they do seem to get the bottom octave more or less correct) or have the proper midrange weight. But my oh my, they sure sound "clean" and to some I'm sure they sound "neutral." I think that Class D amps that are currently becoming the rage in some circles may be an example of what some would consider a bleached out sound while others would tell you how "neutral" they are. They are super quiet, they have rockem-sockem dynamics, and deep bass extension, but what are they missing?

But don't think that gutless neutrality is strictly the provenance of Class D amps in particular and SS in general. Mike talked about how the sound of VAC amps has changed as that company has pursued the holy grail of "neutrality." And VAC isn't the only tube company that has gone down this path.

I'm all for signal purity. I like a really well designed and built power supply that doesn't make noises that you can hear from your speakers which increases your S/N ratio. I don't want my gear to add hum or other extraneous noises to my signal and I shouldn't have to buy $50k worth of power line conditioning products to get there either. What I don't want is a sound that has been scrubbed squeaky clean at the expense of the music and what was actually recorded all in the name of "neutrality."

What say you?
 
I remember chatting with the owner/designer at LA Audio a year or two ago at one of the shows, I think it was CES. I was telling him what a relief it was to come into his room and hear such glorious, rich music. We talked about the topic of "neutrality" and he said to me something like "you know how you get neutrality? You stretch out the sound top and the bottom by sacrificing the middle, leaving you a thin, bland sound." He then looked at me like he was going to tell me a secret and said, "the magic is in the midrange and you lose that magic when you stretch out the sound to achieve neutrality."

My point is that absolute neutrality can never be achieved. Sources, speakers, cables, amps, preamps and even the room, will all add a certain "flavor" and unless you have the musicians sitting right beside you playing as you "voice" your particular product. How do you know how that Selmer Sax REALLY sounds? How do you know how that acoustic guitar REALLY sounds? Yes, the guitar will never sound like a piano, but you get my point. Absolute is absolute, and in this case will never, can never be achieved. At the end of the day, you can never achieve absolute systematic neutrality because something else will always add "flavor".

I don't know who started this "too much color", "coloration is bad, neutral is good" nonsense, but I do know JV is a big proponent of it.

Manufacturers shouldn't be striving for who can make the whitest, blandest tasting rice, but rather, who can make the most excitingly flavored, palatable rice.
 
Mike said:
I remember chatting with the owner/designer at LA Audio a year or two ago at one of the shows, I think it was CES. I was telling him what a relief it was to come into his room and hear such glorious, rich music. We talked about the topic of "neutrality" and he said to me something like "you know how you get neutrality? You stretch out the sound top and the bottom by sacrificing the middle, leaving you a thin, bland sound." He then looked at me like he was going to tell me a secret and said, "the magic is in the midrange and you lose that magic when you stretch out the sound to achieve neutrality."

My point is that absolute neutrality can never be achieved. Sources, speakers, cables, amps, preamps and even the room, will all add a certain "flavor" and unless you have the musicians sitting right beside you playing as you "voice" your particular product. How do you know how that Selmer Sax REALLY sounds? How do you know how that acoustic guitar REALLY sounds? Yes, the guitar will never sound like a piano, but you get my point. Absolute is absolute, and in this case will never, can never be achieved. At the end of the day, you can never achieve absolute systematic neutrality because something else will always add "flavor".

I don't know who started this "too much color", "coloration is bad, neutral is good" nonsense, but I do know JV is a big proponent of it.

Manufacturers shouldn't be striving for who can make the whitest, blandest tasting rice, but rather, who can make the most excitingly flavored, palatable rice.
Click to expand...

The question is not how the sax "really" sounds, but what's in the recording you're playing. Coloration (as the opposite of neutrality) is when all saxes, all instruments, all recordings sound somewhat the same. We can all quote speakers, amps and CD-players that make every recording sound the same.

Many audiophiles are after a given sound, one that they like for a reason or another (it goes well with the music they like, they have pleasant memories associated with it, something physiological...). I heard many "it's excellent but it's not my sound".

A transparent or neutral system is one on which different instruments, different recordings, will sound very different. So manufacturers sure shouldn't be trying to be bland, but some are striving to reproduce what's in the recording (and that is not the same thing as the real instrument) as faithfully as possible. This doesn't have to be the only measure of a system's quality, and it may even not matter to some people, but it has a precise meaning and reality.

The idea that this is just about spectral balance, about some response curve, seems short-sighted to me. If you want to throw in measurement, at least phase and rise time should be added for a start.
 
Long time ago I auditioned a pair of Dynaudio's. The dealer explained that these are beautiful, neutral transducers. Then I have listened to the most boring sound (ever?). Since that time both Dynaudio and the term neutral are not on top of my mind when I audition or look for improvement.
 
Mike said:
I remember chatting with the owner/designer at LA Audio a year or two ago at one of the shows, I think it was CES. I was telling him what a relief it was to come into his room and hear such glorious, rich music. We talked about the topic of "neutrality" and he said to me something like "you know how you get neutrality? You stretch out the sound top and the bottom by sacrificing the middle, leaving you a thin, bland sound." He then looked at me like he was going to tell me a secret and said, "the magic is in the midrange and you lose that magic when you stretch out the sound to achieve neutrality."

My point is that absolute neutrality can never be achieved. Sources, speakers, cables, amps, preamps and even the room, will all add a certain "flavor" and unless you have the musicians sitting right beside you playing as you "voice" your particular product. How do you know how that Selmer Sax REALLY sounds? How do you know how that acoustic guitar REALLY sounds? Yes, the guitar will never sound like a piano, but you get my point. Absolute is absolute, and in this case will never, can never be achieved. At the end of the day, you can never achieve absolute systematic neutrality because something else will always add "flavor".

I don't know who started this "too much color", "coloration is bad, neutral is good" nonsense, but I do know JV is a big proponent of it.

Manufacturers shouldn't be striving for who can make the whitest, blandest tasting rice, but rather, who can make the most excitingly flavored, palatable rice.
Click to expand...

This is exactly my point. I do think that some designers are creating an artificial sense of neutrality by doing that.
 
Mike said:
I remember chatting with the owner/designer at LA Audio a year or two ago at one of the shows, I think it was CES. I was telling him what a relief it was to come into his room and hear such glorious, rich music. We talked about the topic of "neutrality" and he said to me something like "you know how you get neutrality? You stretch out the sound top and the bottom by sacrificing the middle, leaving you a thin, bland sound." He then looked at me like he was going to tell me a secret and said, "the magic is in the midrange and you lose that magic when you stretch out the sound to achieve neutrality."

My point is that absolute neutrality can never be achieved. Sources, speakers, cables, amps, preamps and even the room, will all add a certain "flavor" and unless you have the musicians sitting right beside you playing as you "voice" your particular product. How do you know how that Selmer Sax REALLY sounds? How do you know how that acoustic guitar REALLY sounds? Yes, the guitar will never sound like a piano, but you get my point. Absolute is absolute, and in this case will never, can never be achieved. At the end of the day, you can never achieve absolute systematic neutrality because something else will always add "flavor".

I don't know who started this "too much color", "coloration is bad, neutral is good" nonsense, but I do know JV is a big proponent of it.

Manufacturers shouldn't be striving for who can make the whitest, blandest tasting rice, but rather, who can make the most excitingly flavored, palatable rice.
Click to expand...

Good post, Mike. The term "neutral" to me has always meant a generally flat frequency response across the entire audible frequency range. The term "transparent" to me has always meant true to (or the least deviation from) the original recording. One of the things that attracted me to the Revel Salon 2's was that it had one of the flattest frequency response curves that Stereophile ever measured for a full sized speaker. When I listened to the speakers the first time, what I noticed was that the bass, midrange and treble were neither too bright nor too recessed, just right in my opinion. So in this case neutrality was an aurally pleasing phenomenon for me, which was backed up by empirical measurements.

Best,
Ken
 
Neutrality can be measured, at least for the electronic part of the reproducing chain. The electro-acoustical part is kind of more difficult to assess but not impossible.

Whether you like neutrality is a whole different story mostly linked to the Fletcher-Munson curves.
 
iosiP said:
Neutrality can be measured, at least for the electronic part of the reproducing chain. The electro-acoustical part is kind of more difficult to assess but not impossible.

Whether you like neutrality is a whole different story mostly linked to the Fletcher-Munson curves.
Click to expand...

Say what?
 
mep said:
I'm beginning to wonder if some people are confusing "neutral" with a sound that I would describe as being bleached out. This is the sound of components that are "squeaky clean" sounding but yet are harmonically threadbare and don't offer much in the way of midbass punch (even if they do seem to get the bottom octave more or less correct) or have the proper midrange weight. But my oh my, they sure sound "clean" and to some I'm sure they sound "neutral." I think that Class D amps that are currently becoming the rage in some circles may be an example of what some would consider a bleached out sound while others would tell you how "neutral" they are. They are super quiet, they have rockem-sockem dynamics, and deep bass extension, but what are they missing?
Click to expand...

Agreed. I think today's "Neutral" is actually more colored than folks really think. The distortion/negative feedback has stripped out the harmonics.

But I also think some folks like what they traditionally would call "colored" as well- for example, 300B amps. I think there are limits to the second harmonic to my ears, but everyone is different. Nelson Pass' article on negative feedback said 30% of the audiophiles preferred 2nd harmonic and like 30% preferred 3rd. I might be in the ladder camp, so we each listen differently.
 
KeithR said:
Agreed. I think today's "Neutral" is actually more colored than folks really think. The distortion/negative feedback has stripped out the harmonics.
Click to expand...

Something has stripped out the harmonics which is why some gear sounds like there is no meat on the bones.
 
I think people also forget- music is warm by nature. Matt @ PPA told me this once and it has rang with me since.
 
Alpinist said:
Good post, Mike. The term "neutral" to me has always meant a generally flat frequency response across the entire audible frequency range. The term "transparent" to me has always meant true to (or the least deviation from) the original recording. One of the things that attracted me to the Revel Salon 2's was that it had one of the flattest frequency response curves that Stereophile ever measured for a full sized speaker. When I listened to the speakers the first time, what I noticed was that the bass, midrange and treble were neither too bright nor too recessed, just right in my opinion. So in this case neutrality was an aurally pleasing phenomenon for me, which was backed up by empirical measurements.

Best,
Ken
Click to expand...

Transparent is exactly what it sounds like.

From J. Gordon Holt's The Audio Glossary.
(1) a quality of sound reproduction which gives the impression one is listening through the system to the original sounds, rather than to a pair of loudspeakers. (2) freedom from veiling, texturing, or any other quality that tends to obscure the signal. A quality of crystalline clarity.

Me added. It's the ability on the best systems to clearly visualize in the minds eye, instruments or musicians located in the furthest reaches of the soundstage. It's also the ability to clearly visualize not only the back and side halls of the recording, but even the ceiling on the very best of the recorded art. It's the absence of a "smoke-like" murkiness that envelopes the soundstage and not only obscures the back of the soundstage but also the lateral and vertical spaces between performers.

My experience over the last couple of years is that there's an inverse relationship between the combined noise floor of the system (electronics, cables, sources, speakers, isolation, electricity-and even room acoustics (!)) and a system's transparency.
 
Myles B. Astor said:
My experience over the last couple of years is that there's an inverse relationship between the combined noise floor of the system (electronics, cables, sources, speakers, isolation, electricity-and even room acoustics (!)) and a system's transparency.
Click to expand...

I agree with your post above. But can you clarify what I quoted above? Are you saying that you feel a lower noise floor sounds less transparent? So a system with a 95db noise floor sounds more real than one with 133db?


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I want it to sound better than transparent. If I wanted transparent, I'd pay more attention to pro audio. I guess I'm an unapologetic colorationist.


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kev313 said:
I want it to sound better than transparent. If I wanted transparent, I'd pay more attention to pro audio. I guess I'm an unapologetic colorationist.


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Click to expand...

Transparency has nothing to do with coloration. They are totally separate entities.

And the Pro Audio gear that I've heard is no more and actually much less transparent than high-end audio equipment. Pro gear is basically about two things: dynamics and low end. The latter is particular important so there isn't any rumble or any other low frequency artifacts on the recording.
 
Mike said:
I agree with your post above. But can you clarify what I quoted above? Are you saying that you feel a lower noise floor sounds less transparent? So a system with a 95db noise floor sounds more real than one with 133db?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

If only it was that simple. :)
 
kiwi_1282001 said:
Say what?

While I can't argue with your observation, I can say this has not been my experience.

Noise obscures signal and you appear to be proposing that more noise equals greater transparency..
Click to expand...

Huh where did I say that? Just the opposite. As the amount of noise in the system goes down, transparency goes up. That's inverse. And with that more shadings, subtleties, information, and less intranote smearing and noise between the notes.
 
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