What exactly is colored sound?

Commercial recording engineers are endeavoring to make a "good" sounding recording, sure, but what good means to them may be very different from what an audiophile means by good. In all the studios I’ve been recorded in, the engineers have mics they have come to prefer for specific applications. A lot of them like the Shure SM57, for instance---a PA vocal mic, for snare drum. The mic has a presence peak deliberately engineered into the mic’s frequency response, to make vocals coming through a PA more audible. Used as a recording mic, it adds the same presence region boost to snare drums, making them "pop" and "cut" in a mix better than does a mic with a flatter frequency response. Those engineers are not in the least concerned with capturing the inherent, true timbre of the drum, but rather to get a "good" snare sound, one that will suit the sound he is after in the entire mix.

I have recordings of the same snare drum, a Ludwig Supraphonic 400 (the snare preferred by John Bonham, Alex Van Halen, Roger Hawkins, and many others, myself included. John and Alex in the 6.5" deep version, Roger and myself the 5"), made in different studios by different engineers, and though the drum in all the recordings is obviously a Supraphonic, the same drum sounds very different in some of them.

Listening to a commercial Pop recording, the listener has absolutely no idea what the recording "should" sound like---what an accurate reproduction of the recording actually is. The idea of using exquisitely engineered High End components to reproduce the trash on most commercial products is actually comical. Who can blame a music-loving consumer for being more interested in a "good" sounding system than in an "accurate", uncolored one? Of what value is an uncolored system if the recordings are colored to begin with? Then there is the problem of audiophile loudspeakers being very different sounding than studio monitors (Oy. You wanna talk about colored?!), a subject too complicated to go into here.

There is the old argument that the more transparent a system, the more it will reveal the excellent sound of good recordings, but also the poor sound of bad ones. I believe most audiophiles try to assemble a system that balances the ability to faithfully reproduce good recordings with the ability to make average or poor recordings sound as tolerable as possible. That’s a tricky balancing act! Good "enough", but not "too" good.

With Gordon, you knew exactly what he was looking for in hi-fi equipment, what his criteria was. I took his belief of the lack-of-coloration being the number one priority of a reproduction system as self-evident, also feeling that the reproduction of the timbre of voices and instruments as close to lifelike as possible is where hi-fi begins; if a speaker (in particular, as they are still the most colored component in a system) fails the timbre test, it doesn’t matter what other qualities the speaker possesses. Singing, both solo and in harmony and/or counterpoint, is my favorite element in the performance of music (the key word being "performance"; the music itself---chord sequences, melodies, harmonies, etc.) is more important to me than it’s performance. A great song performed only adequately is preferable to me to an adequate song performed greatly.

But I have to admit, Art Dudley’s argument that lack of "vowel" coloration (as Gordon put it) was only one of many qualities gear has to have, and not necessarily the most important to any given listener (ha ;-), himself included. Gordon believed that not considering timbre the most important element in music reproduction was "wrong". Art argues that the notion of believing accurate timbre should be EVERYONE’S priority is "wrong", that a listener is equally justified in making any other criteria (such as Art’s desire for a component to reproduce a musician’s "touch", and to reproduce the "forward momentum" of a player/band that a recording has captured) his or her number one priority, that making that ability (or any other, such as many audiophiles preoccupation with imaging, a low priority for both Art and myself) one’s number one priority is just as valid as is Gordon’s. Even if I agree with Gordon about timbre, I agree with Art that Gordon's insistence that everyone see it that way is wrong.

When the original audiophiles in the 1950's coined the term "coloration", they used it in the same way video technicians do now with video projectors and monitors---in terms of the accurate reproduction of color "temperature". In video, that means greens look green, reds red, etc. In sound, that means a violin sounds like a violin, not like a cello. An alto singer sounds alto, not tenor. No "color" (deviations from flat frequency response) added to or subtracted from the recording. But as the op said, how does one know what a recording "should" sound like?

Gordon Holt, creator of Stereophile in the early 1960's, and the reviewer credited, even by Harry Pearson, as the man responsible for creating, or at least codifying, the audiophile vocabulary, was very serious about lack of coloration, considering it the number one priority in the reproduction of music.

Gordon recommended everyone make their own recordings, so as to have a known reference in terms of evaluating a components lack of coloration. I did just that, recording a Jump/Blues Swing Band live, using just a pair of high-quality condenser mics straight into a Revox A77 reel-to-reel. One can never be completely certain what any given commercial recording should sound like; one made by yourself is a different story.

Record friends talking, or an a cappella group live; we are very familiar with voices, and immediately hear coloration in the reproduction of them. Record an upright bass; you immediately hear any "thickening" a speaker adds to it's reproduction. Another instrument very revealing of added coloration is a piano; that instrument has a very wide frequency response, and reproducing the two strings of every key equally in tonality, attack and decay, etc., is still far beyond the capability of any system to do perfectly.