What exactly is colored sound?

Tzh21y, whatever is done in that case, to process the music would be done to achieve a sound that the producer intends.  So the finished product is a sound that is intended, whether one agrees with this processing or not.

This is why I usually prefer a system that is neutral, because I want to hear the music as the artist and producer intended.  Having components or speakers that color the sound would be detrimental to that goal.

I have found that some loudspeakers are intentionally designed to color the sound.  The ones that surprise me are the brands that attempt to hide this fact from customers, and just present their product as "sounding" better while hiding certain specs from the public.  

Let me offer a thought.

What you call 'color' is technically referred to as 'timbre'.  We consider a 'sound' made up of collections of individual audio domane energies that each in turn are made up of :

1 - Amplitudes - audio energy filling a frequency domain, such as a guitar string plucked.  Such a signal has 'overtones', usually but not exclusively sequentially harmonically related energies as in 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so on.  Non-harmonic information can be included by the author of the 'sound' as part of this design, like some energy as noise or posing some weird harmonic relationship (it is an art afterall).

2 - Phases -  each of the individual Amplitudes or overtones maintains a physically and thus sonically unique relationship with every other overtone.  Kind of a Mach's principle but in audio.

Thus is the timbre of the sound as the ear hears it.  Change any of the individual overtone's amplitude or phase and you change its relationship to the 'ensemble', the 'sound' through any given time interval.  In effect the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, it is a gestalt. 

It in interesting that the measurement of Total Harmonic Distortion would suggest a good method of assessing performance relative to upsetting the Timbre of a sound in circuit.

The fact is that THD is not very useful, it does not tell you anything about the Timbre. Nothing about either the amplitudes or phases of the overtones, Nothing al all about what has been subtracted from the overtones.  0nly the aggregate has an amount.  In theory it will tell you a circuit adds to a overtone set of energies but says nothing about the important issue of relationships of overtones.

So we know what 'color' is along with a whole bunch of descriptive terms for sound. May a better way to talk about is the 'color of the tambe", who knows.

Good luck in your pursuit of knowledge, it is commentable.

BarryThornton

When buying a serious piece of equipment, in addition to your test recordings bring along a reasonably good guitar to compare to what speakers play. Anyone can strike a few accords. Well, maybe better not or you'll never buy anything except perhaps the very best.