How do you judge your system's neutrality?

Good link Shadorne, thanks.

I've been doing critical listening lately from 12-24" away. You can hear a lot more hash and detail from the driver than the normal 6-10 feet. Cuts out room interactions too.
I don't know why but listening farther away smooths out the sound and also removes a lot of micro-detail.

Not all ATC's are neutral. The SCM 11 is described by John Marks as having a "smiley face" F-R. Although the 2nd order x-over could have be one reason they sound good.

Narrow dispersion such as Snell with +/-15 degree dispersion could reduce room effects and increase "neutrality".

Loss of transparency can come from a lot of things. Driver distortion, crossover distortion, delayed sounds that come from a heavy, underdamped, cabinet; heavy drivers that resonate, time delays between drivers. Flat F-R is only one component.

I disagree that a $50,000 system will always sound more enjoyable than a $300 system. Throwing a lot of money at audio doesn't guarantee good sound. I have found that while an expensive system can have more detail, bass, volume, on and on for the most part, I simply don't like how they sound. Maybe it's because they expose TOO much - the bad as well as the good. And that goes for the systems shwoing off its own arts as well. While I can appreciate all their audiophile traits, I simply don't like how most high end systems sound. Meaning if you just kick back and listen without being critical of every nit (how audiophile's are trained to listen) do you enjoy the experience.

When you limit a driver in the frequency domain, you also limit it in the time domain. I've heard it often, especially in bass drivers. When the bass driver is cut off over "X" frequency vs. running full range, bass becomes slow and lacks punch, timing, impact and rhythm.

Has there ever been the assumption that a photo or painting could be mistaken for the real thing? Does that make it any less beautiful? Why should audio be any different?

Sometimes they all bring our a beauty that was hidden even when we saw the real thing.

I agree with you. Just because a recording is not perfectly accurate does not mean you should throw the whole accuracy thing away. Just giving a different perspective that the best you can hope for is a perfect reproduction of the recording, not to reproduce the live event. The way most recordings I listen to sound, no need for me to go much beyond what I have now.

So some of my points are:
1) If we all want perfect accuracy, then if one stereo had perfect accuracy in all regards, we'd all own the same stereo.

2) I think a lot of hi-end audio is about making a mountain out of a molehill to justify hanging a huge price tag on it.

3) People get so hung up on comparing component A to B, trying to hear the smallest of nuances, that they lose site of the big picture of how close is ANY of it to reality.
How about big picture reasoning that, for example, you could spend $10,000 for wire, etc. on a passive system when you'd be better off spending the $10,000 to go active. Or going with a dipole speaker like Linkwitz Orions vs. a monkey coffin?

The photography analogy is relevant because they are going for the same thing as audiophiles except it is visual and so less abstract. It's a different perspective of the same concept. If we could see sound, it would be like the photography people. Maybe a whole lot less disagreements too. Are photography chat sites as debated as audio? Probably not as it's easier to understand and you can decide for yourself. But with audio, being so abstract, we need each other's help to figure the whole mess out. Makes for good socializing though.

Can Albert Porter explain the photography thing for us? I'm sure a lot of people spend big money on cameras too in the name of accuracy stuff like depth of field, sharp focus, correct colors. But why then is that okay, while an expensive stereo is crazy?

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.

Tholt, I agree that for many, the fundamental goal of stereo reproduction is the illusion of the real thing. Not so for photographers. Maybe they are saving themelves a whole bunch of grief not trying to chase down the impossible.

Let's start at the beginning. Are there any recordings that truly sound real? Maybe the best one can hope for is perfect reproduction of what is on the original recording. Because even those are an artistic interpretation by the recording studio, just like a photograph. For example, mic placement can hugely alter how an event is sounds.

So where did this goal come from? Stereophile and the other mag's propagate this so people spend more money trying to achieve what is, dare I say, unachievable. Was this always the goal of hi-end audio? Even back in the 60's when it was considered a main stream, legitimate endeavor by society.
Fact is, when you insert even one wire into the chain, you have irreversibly altered the signal so it is not real anymore.

So when you have the illusion of the real thing in your living room is the stereo creating the illusion or is the listener deceiving himself? Sometimes on first listen and for short periods of time, reproduced audio can be mistaken for the real thing. The classic case is the audio reviewer whose wife calls in from the other room and says it sounds real. Sure, brief non-critical listening. It can happen.

The longer I listen, the more the pieces of phoniness start to make themselves known. In any system. Maybe that's why people keep changing their stereo over and over. The more you listen, the more you hear the defects and thinks by change, they will go away. They do until the new shortcoming pop up. Yes, you can upgrade and the problems are less, but they are never going to go away completely. So where do you stop the madness?

I talked to this one guy who started with Epos and made the rounds for 5 years with many different speakers. I asked him how he compared what he had now to the Epos - balancing out pros an cons - in HIS particular situation. He paused, thought about it, and admitted he really had just been going in circles and had really accomplished nothing. It's all about the journey, I guess.

I see folks getting so into the trees they don't see the forest. For example, John Marks in October 2010 Stereophile who upgrades to Cardas wire and notices the sound is clearer with more bass. But what about the overall perspective that, say, their system with a passive x-over is fundamentally flawed and they are only "polishing a turd"?