How do you judge your system's neutrality?

I think Bryon and Almarg addressed most of Learsfool's comments, but I'd like to add something on this point:

To be clear, I am not suggesting that room correction is worthless, indeed these systems can make a big difference; I just wonder - how do you know when it has been corrected? Again, only you can answer that for yourself, and your answer may be very different from any other given audiophile's.

Typically with room correction there is a fair amount of objectivity in the process. You play frequency sweeps through the system and then look at the response curve, with the goal of setting filters to reduce peaks caused by room modes. Some systems do this entirely automatically, though I believe that the manual approach is still better. But I don't think this is the same as setting the system so it sounds good to the individual. It is set to neutralize room modes, and as a byproduct the system sounds better.

This is really not all that different from voicing a system by moving speakers around and looking at the results on a real time analyzer. A properly treated room with well-placed speakers is an attempt to minimize the coloration caused by the room. But a lot of folks have limited options for treatments and speaker placement, and for them, room EQ is a viable alternative for achieving less system coloration.

Almarg wrote:

If a system is truly accurate yet still results in a lifeless/soulless sound, then it seems to me that there is a problem with the recording(s) being listened to. In that case, it seems to me to be perfectly legitimate to introduce some modest degree of inaccuracy into the system, such as non-flat frequency response, to compensate. The price that will be paid is that other recordings which are more accurate and transparent will then no longer be reproduced to their full potential.

I mentioned in an earlier post that it is now possible to provide different EQ for every song in your library. (The capability is a bit crude now, and would be difficult to implement for analog sources, but there are no technological hurdles to this capability.) This is the have your cake and eat it too scenario. You could fix up the recordings that need it, and leave the others alone. One could imagine adding other tools besides just EQ: volume graphing, dynamic range enhancement, etc.

On that same point, this capability appears to be one (less Rube Goldbergesque) way of achieving greater contrast within and among recordings, even to the point of exceeding the contrast in the source. Which would, by the definition given in the OP, increase neutrality. (While also being less accurate, and possibly more or less transparent.)

So, again, do we need to rein in neutrality with some counterinfluence beyond a simple monotonic relationship with contrast? There are a couple of approaches that one would ordinarily use:

1) Instead of a simple linear function, you would add a saturation term. Lets use "N" for neutrality and "C" for contrast. Lower case letters will be constants. We have something like N = a + b*C. But we could add a term to cause neutrality to saturate and even reverse: N = a + b*C - d*C^2 (where "C^2" is C squared). Here, d would be small, so that for small C the linear term dominates, but when we get to larger C, the C^2 term dominates. Thus, for increasing contrast, you get increasing neutrality to a point, then the function rolls over and neutrality starts to decrease.

2) You can leave the function alone, but introduce another function whose behavior is in the opposite direction. Say the parameter in question is X, then you have X = c + d*C, where d is negative. Note that it doesn't have to be C, contrast, but could be some other parameter tied to C. You then adjust the coefficients so that the intersection of the two lines is ideally neutral and ideally X. On one side of that point you want to increase contrast, on the other, you want to decrease contrast (or the related parameter).

The problem with both of these approaches is that you need a reference point of some sort. In #1 you need to know how much contrast is too much. In #2, you need to define ideal neutrality (and ideal X) so you can set your intersection. I confess I don't know how to do that, though I think the answer might be found in knowing what things actually sound like. But that gets back to my earlier question: If one could define that point, would it alone be a sufficient condition for neutrality? And if one can't define the point, how do we know when too much contrast is too much?

Al – I agree with everything in your last post. Also, I was happy to read that you are valuing the discussions on this thread. I am as well. As far as your remark that “It would seem to be verging on forming a good basis for a master's thesis, if not a doctoral dissertation!” I should mention that I actually did write a doctoral dissertation relevant to many of these topics. It was for a Ph.D. in philosophy, and my dissertation concentrated on topics in the philosophy of science. Audio was never mentioned, as it focused on technical issues concerning intertheoretic relations, objective vs. subjective knowledge, taxonomic categorization, interlevel reductionism, and mechanistic vs. complex systems. Yet it has occurred to me many times during this thread that there is a remarkable amount of overlap between those topics and topics that audiophiles commonly discuss.

Learsfool wrote:

I have heard "room correction" in an enthusiastic dealer's showroom that resulted in a very dead, lifeless sound as well -it depends on how it is applied, which depends on who is applying it.

I agree with this. I too have heard bad examples of room correction. The success of room correction relies on the technology involved and how it is implemented. But that is true of virtually everything in audio.

Learsfool wrote:

Unless I am very much mistaken, it is not possible to remove all of the effects of room nodes and other similar acoustic phenomena, no matter how good the room correction system is.

This is most certainly true, but just because we can’t control ALL room effects does not mean we can’t control ANY room effects, or that our efforts to do so aren’t worthwhile. Your reasoning here reminds me of your earlier comments about neutrality, when you seemed to suggest that, since we can’t achieve absolute neutrality, there was no point in trying to make a system sound as neutral as possible. To my mind, both these arguments suffer from the same mistake: They make THE PERFECT the enemy of THE GOOD.

Learsfool wrote:

These phenomena [i.e. room effects] are a part of what gives all great concert halls their individual character, for instance.

I understand that every concert hall, like every other room, has a unique sonic signature, and that it is important to be able to hear the sonic signature of the concert hall when listening to music that was recorded it. But the way to hear the sonic signature of the concert hall is not to RECREATE its sonic signature in your playback room. The way to hear the sonic signature of the concert hall is to MINIMIZE the sonic signature of your playback room. Al made the same point in his last post:

Ideally the recording should capture the acoustic characteristics of the hall, as they exist at some presumably well chosen location within it. If that recording is then played back on a system that has flat frequency response (and that has good accuracy in other respects) then it will accurately reproduce those hall characteristics, including any deviations from frequency response flatness, as well as ambiance, reverberation, etc.

And I made a corollary point earlier on this thread:

The more neutral an audio system, the less it colors the music with ITS OWN SIGNATURE. The less an audio system colors the music with its own signature, the more you will hear THE SIGNATURE OF THE MUSIC.

Learsfool – I believe that a recurring disagreement between us is whether the following two things are the same:

(1) The characteristics of GOOD MUSICAL PLAYBACK.
(2) The characteristics of A GOOD PLAYBACK SYSTEM.

I think that you believe that (1) and (2) are the same. I believe that (1) and (2) are often different, and sometimes opposite. Take neutrality, for example. You have said that neutrality is not a characteristic of GOOD MUSICAL PLAYBACK. As you have pointed out, musicians and recording engineers do not want their music to sound “neutral.” I completely agree with this.

But you seem to conclude from the fact that neutrality is not a characteristic of GOOD MUSICAL PLAYBACK that neutrality is not a characteristic of A GOOD PLAYBACK SYSTEM. I disagree with that conclusion. The assumption underlying your conclusion seems to be that, if a playback system is neutral, it will make the music played back on it sound neutral. I believe that assumption is false, as I said in an earlier post:

Neutrality (i.e. freedom from coloration) in an audio system does not lead to neutrality (i.e. SAMENESS) in the music played back on it, but rather the opposite. Neutrality in an audio system leads to DIVERSITY in the music played back on it.

Because of this, I believe that the characteristics of good musical playback and the characteristics of a good playback system are not the same, and sometimes opposite.

Learsfool wrote:

Many audiophiles do use EQ for many other purposes besides room correction…I would think that almost all of these other uses of EQ would be a violation of your "neutrality" principles, if I understand them correctly (for instance, wanting to make a violin's extreme high register sound less harsh), would they not?

I don’t use EQ for any other purpose than room correction, and the EQ I’m using precedes any D/A conversion. Like many audiophiles, I would be very hesitant to run an analog signal through a multiband equalizer for playback, mostly because of concerns about the loss of resolution.

But your question is whether the use of EQ is NECESSARILY a deviation from neutrality. The answer is: It depends on which level of organization you are talking about. By definition, the use of EQ is a deviation from neutrality AT THE LEVEL OF THE COMPONENT. But it is not necessarily a deviation from neutrality AT THE LEVEL OF THE SYSTEM, where "the system" includes the room and your listening position in it. That is because the judicious use of EQ could compensate for room effects that are themselves deviations from neutrality. For example, if the room contains a lot of hard surfaces and is bright, EQ’ing the treble could result in a SYSTEM that is more neutral, even though, at the component level, you have made the signal less neutral.

My own view is that both component-level neutrality and system-level neutrality are important. A neutral room will make it easier to achieve a neutral system. In this respect, it is probably the most important component in the system.

Newbee wrote:

But [this thread] does seem to have morf'd into something completely different from the original post where in, as I interpreted it, Bryon was informing us that he had discovered by increasing the quality of his components he was hearing far better replications of the recordings he was playing and he could hear differences that had previously lost. No problem there! Most anyone willing to be called an audiophile would agree with that - we've all been there/done that.

Newbee - Your interpretation of my original post, as described above, misses the central point of it: To propose an operationalization of the concept of ‘neutrality.’ I doubt that many audiophiles would say that they had “been there/done that” with respect to operationalizing the concept of ‘neutrality.’

Newbee wrote:

Despite noble attempts, perhaps even Herculean, by Bryon I doubt that any of us really agree on the subtle differences if any (I can tell by deeply gazing into my crystal ball).

There is no evidence in this thread to support that conclusion. So far, my proposals have received support from Shadorne, Almarg, Dgarretson, and Cbw723. Notable detractors have included you, Learsfool, Blindjim, Kijanski, and Hamburg. That is a fairly even split. I usually resist the temptation to keep score, since it lowers the tenor of the conversation, but your comment misrepresents the composition of views on this thread.

Newbee wrote:

…assuming that we have discussed adequately all of the philosophical issues, how does the aspiring audiophile utilize anything in this post to help him achieve his goals? Al, a degree perhaps, but in what. :-)

Newbee - It seems you don’t believe this discussion is valuable to audiophiles. This is apparently a change of heart, because until recently, you were among the thread’s most active contributors. It is unfortunate, and perhaps revealing, that you question the value of this thread on the same day that another poster expressed how much he values it.

As far as answering the question, “how does the aspiring audiophile utilize anything in this post [sic] to help him achieve his goals?” my answer is:

Expertise in any domain is involves both the development of concepts and the development of perception. (Some forms of expertise also involve the development of motor skills, but that is not relevant here.) The acquisition and refinement of concepts, which much of this thread has been devoted to, facilitates the development of expert perception. That is to say, improving the way you think about things improves the way you see and hear things.

The symphony conductor’s acquisition and refinement of musical concepts improves his expert perception of music. The psychologist’s acquisition and refinement of psychological concepts improves his expert perception of human behavior. And the audiophile’s acquisition and refinement of audio concepts improves his expert perception of the playback of recorded music. It seems to me that the value of an audiophile developing expert perception of the playback of recorded music is self-evident.

I find my system is most neutral at very high volume, at the beach on humid days. I like the changes that the Valhalla brings to my system.

A thought on the dilemma concerning increasing the degree of contrast between recordings via equalization, which Cbw723 attempted to address with some creative mathematics in his last post.

I believe it is really a non-issue. If the settings of an equalizer are changed from Setting A to Setting B, as I see it that amounts to a change in the system, which should be evaluated similarly to how substitution of one component for another component would be evaluated.

Meaning that Bryon's proposed test, assessing the degree to which a system makes different recordings sound different, would entail assessing whether Setting A makes different recordings sound more or less different than Setting B. The degree of difference or contrast between Setting A and Setting B is in itself irrelevant with respect to Bryon's test.

Obviously direct A vs. B comparisons would also be made on individual recordings, just as would be done if one amplifier were substituted for another, but that is a separate matter which I think is unrelated to Bryon's test, and to which Bryon's test is supplemental.

Best regards,
-- Al

If the settings of an equalizer are changed from Setting A to Setting B, as I see it that amounts to a change in the system, which should be evaluated similarly to how substitution of one component for another component would be evaluated.

I agree with this. But I was mixing two points. My main point was more about the use of equalization (or some other process) to enhance contrast beyond what actually exists in the source or even the live performance. If we assume that neutrality is a characteristic to be maximized, and increasing contrast increases neutrality then, barring some counterbalancing force, we will always work to increase contrast. So, for instance, if I'm listening to a violin concerto, and I happen to know that the timbre of violins is controlled within a certain range of frequencies, I could cleverly EQ the recording to make the different violins sound more different from one another than they actually do. (The same argument can be made for inter-recording contrast as I've just made here for intra-recording contrast by using recording-specific EQ.) By the rules introduced in this thread, I've achieved greater neutrality, which is something we're trying to maximize. But the result is not desirable. So, assuming that excess contrast is possible, what can we introduce to counterbalance the drive toward always increasing contrast?