Neutral is a word which is absolute. It can only be ’neutral’ (check your dictionary) or its not neutral.
? I am pretty sure that something can be almost neutral.
Bottom line, everything is subjective.
But if neutral is absolute?
What Neutral Means in Reviews & Our Discussions? Are We Confusing Tame/Flat For Neutral?
Does tame or flat = neutral? Shouldn’t "neutral" in describing audio sound mean uncolored and accurate to what the artists sounded like to the naked ear at the time of the master recording? Or is neutral, as used in our community, intended to mean a lack of crescendo, or the like?
I realize this may get controversial, so lets be mindful of other’s experiences and insight. I’m going to use Dynaudio as an example. They’re often touted as being amongst the most neutral of speaker lines. Monitor Audio is another example of such reviews. I’ve listened to several middle of the line Dynaudio’s, including many times at my brother’s house, where he has them mated to an EAD Power Master 1000 thru MIT cables. They do sound beautiful, airy, smooth, and even slightly warm to my ear (though the touch of warmth could easily be the MITs and EAD). His common statement supporting how great they are is, the audio recording industry sound engineers prefer them as their monitors. But I’ve read that the reason audio engineers prefer them is because they are smooth and "flat" or "level", enabling the engineers to hear the difference of the nuances which they create as they manipulate sound during the editing process. Apparently lively or musical monitors, many engineers find to be a distractor, with too much information over riding what they want to focus on as they edit the sound.
I’ve enjoyed watching live bands at small venues for over 3 decades. Anything from a pianist, to cover bands, to original artists of anything from rock, blues, jazz, etc. My personal listening preference for home audio is dynamic sound which brings the live event to me ... soundstage, detail, with air, transparency AND depth. I want it all, as close as it can get for each given $. When I’ve listened to Dynaudios, Ive always come away with one feeling ... they’re very nice to listen too; they’re smooth and pleasing, airy ... and tame.
Recently while reading a pro review of the latest Magico S7 (I’ve never heard them), a speaker commonly referenced as amazingly neutral, the reviewer mentioned how, while capable of genuine dynamics, they seem to deliberately supress dynamics to enough of an extent that they favor a more pleasurable easy going listening experience.
That’s what jarred my thought. Does "neutral" mean tame/flat; does it mean accurate without audible peaks in db of one frequency over another, which is not on the recording; or is it something we’ve minced words about and have lost the genuine meaning of in the name of some audio form of political correctness?
Showing 5 responses by immatthewj
not to start an argument, but when you typed that
were you referring to in only an audio way? That may be, but as an example of "almost neutral" in other areas would be acid/base. For that example, a solution that had a PH of 7 would be neutral and a solution with a PH of 3 would be quite acidic; but if you had a solution that had a PH of 6.99, it would still be technically acidic, but that PH would make it "almost neutral." On the other two points, you typed that:
but that
Those two sentences seem to me to contradict each other.
I honestly do not know. I have a tough time defining many of these audio terms. I agree with you when you type that everything is subjective, including neutral, which you also said was an absolute. I suppose neutral would be true to the mastering--not warm, not bright. not airy, unless the mastering was such. I guess. Maybe. Possibly it would mean not adding any of it's own flavor to the mastering that your source was playing back. If that's even possible.
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do you (or does anyone) know what the opposite of "neutral" is, in an audio sense?("Colored," perhaps?) In a non-audio sense (and also in an audio sense, I suppose), I guess the opposite of cold (which is an absolute?) would be hot, so almost cold would probably be cool and almost hot might be warm). So if there was a term that defined the opposite of "neutral" (in the audio sense of the word), maybe there is a term that would work for "almost neutral." In a non-audio sense, I suppose "biased" or "predudiced" would be the opposite of "neutral," and for all I know, maybe they would also work in audio terminology. I don’t know -- it’s been about twenty years since I’ve sat down & read a Stereophile. |
@ghdprentice
In one of my previous lives I was doing some home nursing for a college age kid, & he & one of his friends were talking about the new color scheme for some college team’s football uniforms, & his friend said that they "were sick." For the longest time I thought that meant he didn’t like them. Your post made me think of that. How right you are.
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