What Neutral Means in Reviews & Our Discussions? Are We Confusing Tame/Flat For Neutral?

Live acoustic music has acoustic signatures and anomalies from myriad reflections and time and phase realities, all interdependent and only becoming a reality at the moment it reaches your ears. 

Neutral means not in gear. Or non combative. Colorless? In any case, if reproduced music in a system sounds good to YOU it means something about the system (and the recording) is working properly and you're free from wondering what neutral means. You're welcome.

I often wonder what the deal is with the live sound reference as the benchmark for high quality in audio. Do live things always sound right? If I play an acoustic guitar which clearly sounds different to the player than somebody sitting near the player (!), which is the reference? As a live sound tech I can take the blame (or more likely rabid or rampant praise) for some things, and do. Great recordings take into account that it's not supposed to sound "live," it's supposed to sound like somebody knows it's being made for home audio. If you can sit in the sweet spot at acoustic concerts you still get room tainted sound, which is unnatural and a form of amplification. You have to be outside in an utterly dead quiet environment hovering above the musicians...which could mean you've recently died. There's yer reference.

Over 5 plus decades I've mixed many live concerts, performed both as a solo player and as part of live bands, done studio work for my own stuff and commercial recording gigs, own my own studio...blah blah blah...none of which makes my opinion more valid, but it does indicate where I'm coming from. Note that I prefer non "treated" listening spaces (containing furniture, books, carpets, fake and real plants, hysterical groupies) as I like some "room sound," and I prefer tubes and horn speakers mostly because they sound more like musicians playing for my ears. My relatively new Pass XA-25 (non tube but still...man...) is designed by a guy who likes his designs to be "musical" sounding regardless of specs, leading to that amp being held in very high regard by some picky listeners. Like me. I've been to some great concert venues for a wide variety of music and rarely think about the sound unless something's wrong with it. Then I grumble later, or simply bail out. Great sound engineers I've known (like my former neighbor Elliot Scheiner) don't intentionally produce recordings to a live standard, they go for something better than that. They really do, and guys like Scheiner actually get it.

"each and every live acoustic event is more or less "holy" in and of itself"...even when they sound bad? I’m not a religious person but maybe I should be to understand the "Holliness" of events, but some sound better than others, and to use them as a standard reference is silly. I don’t think anybody really wants to "replicate small venues" as much as simply enjoy well recorded things such as those engineered by old mister Scheiner. Some musicians really shine in live performances and simply cannot get the mojo from a live show onto their recordings. Very common in the "unpopular music business" that I’m very familiar with so there’s that. I saw a fave, Brad Mehldau, doing an unamplified show of his Bach-like stuff in Cambridge someplace and although he played brilliantly, you couldn’t really hear it well from our seats, and those seats weren't bad...bummer...a poorly attended unamplified Vijay Iyer show later at a more acoustically vibrant theater was astonishing good and I could hear every note...which is the reference? Neither. For the most part Vijay's recordings are free from the aforementioned "acoustic signatures and anomalies from myriad reflections and time and phase realities" and generally sound fabulous. The recent Tyshawn Sorrey, Linda Han Oh, Vijay Iyer album makes my point, a point possibly lost on some here. Recordings that could take into account the disparate listening experiences of everyone are unobtainium, and that's fine with me.

"It appears you just don't dig live acoustic performances." It appears you don't comprehend much of what I've said, including the fact that live acoustic performances have been my life for decades. Why would I "not dig" Vijay Iyer's performance? I raved about it for months and I consider it a highlight of my lifetime of attending live shows. There's a marked difference between thinking things are imperfections and knowing they're realities. "acoustic signatures and anomalies from myriad reflections and time and phase realities" are simply what happens in live events...they don't bother me in the least as it's part of the charm of live music. The "reference" issue is what seems lame to me because it's so utterly varied, as it should be. I don't require that shows sound like recordings as that's simply ridiculous, I simply will continue to wonder about the endless claims of references to the "Absolute Sound" of live as being the goal of recordings...recording arts are simply attempting to make things sound great. An example is the brilliant Bach Trios album by Yo Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile...recorded at James Taylor's home studio, this likely would kill as a live performance, but by carefully recording these guys with  modern recording techniques you get a sound unavailable as a live event...not better than being at a live event, but as good as it gets for recording music which is sort of what one wants. 

Earlier ditto? What planet indeed. Some basics: A live show has actual musicians playing, which has a dynamic quality all its own and we all know that. Filmed ballet doesn’t cut it for me, but live does. My damned 50 years of experience has actually been a valuable thing, and I’ve spent my 10,000+ hours performing, working in studios, and mixing many hundreds of live shows learning something every hour. Recorded music is different so it has to strive for another standard which may or may not work...a preference for live music is great of course and keeps musicians making money, but recordings are what this forum is about unless you plan to hire musicians for home use. You can certainly be inspired by live tonal qualities of instruments, and develop a preference for dynamic gear (I have that preference...horn speakers, etc.), but claiming to know what an absolute "standard" is remains simply opinion.