How do you judge your system's neutrality?

Learsfool writes:

It most certainly does NOT follow that just because I don't believe in neutrality, that therefore I don't believe in coloration! (The same goes for the "neutral room"/ "room coloration" thing). The only way this could possibly be true is within the context of your own personal definition, which is precisely what is under debate here.

No, the thing being debated is how one judges the relative neutrality of one's playback system. The neutrality of a playback system has been defined as the degree of the absence of coloration added by that playback system. If "DoN" is the degree of neutrality of a playback system, and "DoC" is the degree of coloration of a playback system, then (DoN = 1 / DoC) is the assumption of this thread as stated by Bryon. If you believe that playback systems can add more or less coloration to a system, then you implicitly believe that a system can be more or less neutral, as defined here, whether you believe you believe that or not. You can't believe in speed (distance/time) and not believe in slowness (time/distance) and remain logically consistent. If you want to change the definition of playback system coloration or playback system neutrality so that the above equation doesn't hold, feel free to do so, but please do so explicitly and be aware that your definition isn't the thing under discussion here.

As for the "coloration" part: you are using this term in an extremely narrow sense.

Yes, he is. He has stated numerous times that his is talking about certain types of alteration of source information by a playback system.

There is certainly no such thing as a "neutral" violin. A Strad, which costs millions, is not more "neutral" than a $500 school instrument, though of course all would agree it sounds far better, and has a very different "coloration."

A violin is not a playback system, it is a musical instrument. It therefore falls outside the scope of coloration and neutrality as discussed here. The sound of the musical instrument in its recording environment is the subject of our playback systems, not the object. Throughout this thread you have consistently equated playback system neutrality with musical neutrality, but that has never been the suggestion of the thread.

Again, as Kijanki and I keep asking, how do you know what anything is "supposed" to sound like?

I believe he has stated that aural memory is at least one route to this goal. But I don't even think that is necessary. If my system adds a 60Hz hum (a form of coloration) to everything it plays back, there is no guarantee that the removal of the hum will make what comes out of my speakers sound more like the things they are, but they're not going to sound less like them. So, objectively, by removing coloration (i.e., increasing neutrality), my playback system stands a better chance of accurately reproducing the source. Will it "sound better?" That's for me to decide. But it will be more neutral by the terms of this thread.

Cbw723 - Aural memory of what? I've never been to recording studio much less particular session. Maybe concert that I just attended and they made CD recordings 2 days later when my memory is still fresh?

What If I had bad seat at the concert and system plays the way it sounded at the best seat. Should I assume that system is coloring or just be happy with good sound I got.

Trying to recapture live concert that I assumed was amplified through whatever equipment and speakers.... just how is anyone going to replicate that?

My son plays guitar, my wife piano, and daughter viola. Live music, and voices are the source for learning timbre and naturalness. I just attended a Christmas mens chorus held in a church with excellent acoustics. They were accompanied by a piano, and a Cello on one number. Occasionally the church organ would be used. Now, that is a a classroom for re-checking your understanding what real music sounds like.

There is no such thing as the absence of color in sound (and therefore, it logically follows, in sound reproduction). Otherwise music could not exist. The things you are specifically describing as "colorations" (intermodulation distortion, etc.) of course exist. But they are not the only "colorations" that exist in sound or it's reproduction; their absence does not prove the existence of "neutrality." Again, as Kijanki and I keep asking, how do you know what anything is "supposed" to sound like? There is no one answer to that question, and your assertion that there is is dumbfounding.

With great respect, Learsfool, I must say that I am similarly dumbfounded, but in the opposite direction. It has been said numerous times in numerous ways that the less colored (or more accurate or more neutral or more whatever comparable term you prefer) that the system is (including the room), the greater the likelihood that the presumably desirable colorations that were present in the original performance will be reproduced accurately, when averaged across a wide selection of well done recordings.

Bryon has proposed a methodology (assessing the degree to which the system makes different recordings sound different) that seems self-evident (to me and several others who have posted) as having a substantial degree of correlation with the likelihood that a given component or system will help achieve that end. Your own post of 12/4 seemed to recognize that, thereby recognizing the usefulness, or at least potential usefulness, of the methodology ("The bottom line here does not mean you have operationalized the term neutrality. It just means you have a better sounding system").

So why does the fact that it is difficult, in general, to precisely know what anything is supposed to sound like have any relevance in this discussion? And I repeat my challenge of yesterday: Is there any rewording of Bryon's original proposal, including perhaps substitution of some other word or words for "neutrality," that would allow everyone to converge?

Regards,
-- Al

Learsfool wrote:

It most certainly does NOT follow that just because I don't believe in neutrality, that therefore I don't believe in coloration! (The same goes for the "neutral room"/ "room coloration" thing). The only way this could possibly be true is within the context of your own personal definition, which is precisely what is under debate here.

To which Cbw replied:

If you believe that playback systems can add more or less coloration to a system, then you implicitly believe that a system can be more or less neutral, as defined here, whether you believe you believe that or not. You can't believe in speed (distance/time) and not believe in slowness (time/distance) and remain logically consistent.

I agree with Cbw that it is logically inconsistent to believe in coloration and not believe in neutrality, AS COLORATION AND NEUTRALITY HAVE BEEN DEFINED IN THIS THREAD, namely:

‘Coloration’: Additions or subtractions to the playback chain that conceal or corrupt information about the music.

‘Neutrality’: The degree of absence of coloration.

Although this definition of ‘neutrality’ is defined by its RELATION TO coloration, that does not make my reasoning, which employs those concepts, circular.

Learsfool - Our current disagreement seems to be that you object to my definition of 'neutrality.' But I agree with Cbw that my definition of neutrality is NOT “precisely what is under debate,” as you suggested. The focus of the debate, and my original post, is not the DEFINITION of 'neutrality,' but the OPERATIONALIZATION of 'neutrality', that is, the identification of a set of observable conditions that indicate the presence of neutrality. In your post dated 11/25, you seemed to agree with this characterization of the debate:

Thanks for the clarification, Bryon. I guess where we really disagree, then, is on whether you have in fact proposed "conditions that reliably indicate the presence of a characteristic," emphasis on reliably.

Here you seem to acknowledge that the central question of the thread, and the central focus of our disagreement, is the validity of my OPERATIONALIZATION of 'neutrality,' not the validity of my DEFINITION of 'neutrality.'

Of course, you are perfectly entitled to question the validity of my definition of neutrality as well. But it is inaccurate to treat my arguments for the OPERATIONALIZATION of neutrality as though they were arguments for the DEFINITION of neutrality. Doing so does create the appearance of circularity, but it is not a fair characterization of my arguments or my views.

Moving on to one of your concerns with my DEFINITION of neutrality:

So far, the only way you have defined your "neutrality" characteristic is by saying that it is an absence of some other characteristic, which you are calling "coloration." Frankly, I am not certain that this would pass muster as a scientific definition in the first place - I don't think it is accepted to define one thing solely as an absence of some other thing?

You are right I define neutrality in RELATION TO coloration. I don’t see the problem in this. To begin with, I never suggested that my definition was “scientific,” though I suppose my efforts to operationalize the concept could be considered an attempt to make it scientific. Acknowledging that, you are mistaken to suggest that a scientific concept cannot be defined by ABSENCE, as I have done with the definition of ‘neutrality.’ Here are some scientific concepts defined by absence:

Entropy: The ABSENCE of order in a thermodynamic system.
Vacuum: The ASBENCE of matter in a volume of space.
Absolute Zero: The ABSENCE of molecular activity.
Equilibrium: The ABSENCE of global system-level activity resulting from the balance of component-level forces.

In light of this, I do not see why defining ‘neutrality’ in terms of the ABSENCE of coloration is a problem, even if the standard of conceptual validity is a “scientific” concept.

Learsfool wrote:

Kijanki and I keep asking, how do you know what anything is "supposed" to sound like? There is no one answer to that question, and your assertion that there is is dumbfounding. A great many audiophiles calling themselves "objectivists" would stop far short of such an assertion. I fail to see how anyone could think of music or it's reproduction in such black and white terms.

This is a mischaracterization of my view. You are running two different things together:

(1) Is there a FACT OF THE MATTER about whether a system contains colorations (i.e. deviations from neutrality)?
(2) Is there a SINGLE way that a playback system is SUPPOSED TO sound?

My answer to (1) is Yes. That is what makes me an Objectivist about neutrality. But being an Objectivist about neutrality does not make me an Objectivist about ALL CHARACTERISTICS of musical playback. As it turns out, I am NOT an Objectivist about all characteristics of musical playback. Because of that, my answer to (2) above is No – there is not a single way that a playback system is supposed to sound. I hope you will see that my thinking on these topics is not as black and white as you have stated.