What Color is your system


By virtue of the laws of physic no sound can be percieved as unaltered from its way from the vocalist musician or other sound to mastering enginneering circuit and voicing manipulation. to the duplcation process electronic and physical variation to you feeding it through an assembly of electronics presumably chosen to suit your favorite voicing .
Thus no earthbound system no matter how much one wants to believe is absolutely pure nor purely perfect am immaculate not touched.
Thee artfacts of reproduced music I call color.
Please no my system is silver colored etc sophomoric jokes.
I like my sound rich and full but not rolled off the opposte is my preference . Mine is the proverbial Big Tone preference. I like it a little bumped up in mids and upper bass but be very well defined at the any point. I admit like it rich and warm but never blurry fuzzy or unclear I simpoly the very British recessed politeness unbearable with regard to bass. My treble is very airy and transparent very dimensional great imagery.
As a color I would say medium warm but clean.
Whats do you think your system and preferences are for variation from the truly impossible perfect total neutral many seem to think is the "right answer" no matter how difficult it is to listen to orclaim aspire to .
Euphonic is a fine thing and by no means a vulgar curse.
So How about you?. What do you like.
An actual color designation BTW might be a yellow orange in my imagination of the spectrum with red representing warmth in the extreme. Artic ocean blue for cool coloration in that extreme starkness speed no real timbral decay not rich toned a pure precise simple note with no added fat .
mechans
Black, Indian Rosewood and maple. Wonderful contrast that mimics one of the better qualities of music reproduction.

All the best,
Nonoise
^^ Rosewood? Hmmm ... similar here at times, jafreeman. It depends upon what music is on at the moment.  At times the color is the color of cellos, violins, double basses and perhaps an oboe. Other times, it's the color of a tenor or alto sax combined with piano, bass and drums. And then there's the tenor saxophone voice of Sarah Vaughn, which is the color of Heaven. 
Rich black coffee with a small touch of cream and a pinch of sugar. Bitter, yet smooth, and leaves a hint of sweetness.
Since you asked. It is chocolate lightly dusted with powdered sugar or until I switch ultralinear.
Ok, the truth is that my system is as uncolored as I can make it. I try to have nothing stand out which could be considered laid back or boring but to me it is a pleasure to listen to.
Mine is the color of the never ending search for perfection. What color is an empty savings account?... no wait, it is Black.
There was a documentary on television that was about a few people who have the ability to see colors that change with different tones, frequencies, sounds. The problem is that some are beautiful, mellow, and others are very uncomfortable. They cannot turn it off, it's always there. They live life seeing constant changing colors. What a trip! I wonder what color they would see listening to hard rock versus a violin solo. Or a drum solo versus someone humming a pleasant melody. Tubes versus solid state.
I spent nearly the entire question I posed explaing that I am convinced that recording music and your chosen playback system changes the initial sound at the time it was produced. In almost any description of audio -that is the recording or the gear used in playback the term colored is understood. It is the inevitable impact of all the parts alone and together that you percieve you find and I hope like that your system does resulting in your preferred style,voice or sound you use to desrcribe your sound to be.
BTW I MEANT ONLY if I HAD TO assign an ACTUAL color I would use this color to describe what I think warm is.

By no means did I expect these concrete answers about the color that a system congers in your inner thoughts if any.
To be clear I am talking about colored in the manner seen everyday in these forums. .
I like the mind study type explanations and some cute jokes but I hoped you would advocate for a voicing tendency such as how I desribed my preferences. Thanks for your interest in any event.
I learned that one member would describe their system as being one that would amputate your head. That is a sytem I couldn't live with. However I doubt it is fatuiging.
Hi Doug.... so, like what else is there to do on a weekend?

Fun is a part of things too, and way too often I can and do lose perspective regarding that 'fun' thingy.

Hopefully, not every line of every thread here has to be pertinent and educational, with respect to system building, or system synergy composition.

Wether or not someone can or does perceive a color or overtone when listening to music makes me think either someone isn't playing with a full deck, or someone has been spray painting for a while, in an unventelated space... maybe.

it could be valid I suppose too.

I've heard stranger things. Like what color is lightening splitting a tree down it's middle? Or when it hits a light pole? Or a duck?

The first one was mostly orangey whitish... the second strike was hugely green & white... The third ... well there were too many feathers to tell.

In all 3 instances, I was listening to music too. The Oak tree event was at a local picnic.

the light pole incident occurred as I was getting off my scooter at a Holiday Inn in Lake Charles, LA. while seeking shelter from an enormous upstart downpour. It hit an area light pole, about fifteen ft. away from me as I pulled the bike under the lobby entrance awning.

The bad luck bird deal was while fishing on my lake some years ago. It was certainly suprising to me, and surely it came as quite a shock to the bird, but the gator (s) did not seem to mind.

Color, in music I suspect then, is contingent upon more than just components, musical genre, and the setting itself.
If I were synesthetic, I could tell you exactly what color.

If I were enamored with poetic subjectivity, I could tell you precisely what color.

However, since I see the sky as orange and clouds as blue, I can't help but to hear a rainbow.

(Studies on synesthesia have shown no consistent correlation between pitch or key and the associated color.)
I modify much of my audio equipments lighting - changing it to Blue. I also do multicolor ones also.
Honest1, I understand the fixed nature of the relationship between wavelength and frequency. My point was that there is not much merit to discussing a correlation between color and sound without a scale, even if arbitrary. I should have been more clear, "The only way this discussion would have any logical merit is if the color's wavelength was associated with an audio frequency."
Douglas - Every wavelength is associated with one and only one frequency; that frequency is determined by dividing the speed of light by the wavelength - 8th grade physics. I still don't see how this adds any logical merit to the discussion. It is an emotional discussion, and could be useful because listening to music is an emotional experience (when done properly).
Some people experinece something called synesthesia (sp?) in which senses do cross; for them, sounds and words can have very distinct colors. I don't know if all people with this phenomena assign the same color to the same sounds as everyone else. Maybe this is what Douglas was trying to say. But people do seem to assign moods to colors; red is full of turmoil, deep blue is exciting but restrained; many people will describe whitish or glassy colorations to their system. This thread may show that no one percieves the same color the same way, or maybe there will be somke utility to assigning colors to sounds. Either way it will be interesting if people ltake it seriously.
My system is the color that would blow your head clean off.

(With apologies to Clint Eastwood.)
What frequency is the paint on your walls? The only way this discussion would have any logical merit is if the color's wavelength was associated with a frequency. Apart from that this is only nice emotional discussion. Nothing wrong with it, but of limited value for system-building. ;)
It is hard to assign a color to my system, maybe carmel colored for the bass end but the mid/top is so darn neutral the colors change with the source material. Yellow may be close, it is very clean but with natural tonal bloom.

fwiw I see nothing wrong with assigning a color to represent tonal balance of a system - a picture is worth a thousand words sort of a thing.
Green. deeply deeply, green... as in far too much of the green went into it. Some red too. Lot's of red needing to be repaid still.

And some grey... as in those areas yet to be added to or improved upon.

So it's kind of Xmas-y colored.
Blue is what comes to mind for me. Can't explain it but, blue.
But it raises a question: Which do you prefer, natural/silver or black face? And why doesn't every manufacture offer both?
And actually a warm hue of blue.
Clean, with detail, some bloom(all tubes) more interested in highs than bass but with Legacy Focus 20/20's there is plenty of that. The colors and shades of the rainbow are as varied and as numerous as the numbers from 1 to infinity. Each cable, electronic, cartridge, tonearm, turntable, isolation platform, power cable, resistor, capacitor, etc. etc. etc. informs or deforms the presentation. A good system is like art, we all know what it is when we see it but how many of us can produce it? Wheather in sound/audio or some other medium. Hopefully a happy one.
What do you think I am kidding about. Are you saying you have no coloration in your system? Or do you think I jest that I like a warmish richly toned clean sound. Or that my premise is wrong and your of the belief that the recording mastering, duplication, and playback component choices do not alter the actual music played?
I balanced my system: Laid back amp with very revealing speakers. Nice neutral balance.