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Absolute neutrality?

S-Man said:
It's like: If the sound engineer had one sugar in his tea and you want your tea to taste similar, you need to add one sugar to yours. You don't end up with tea that tastes twice as sweet!
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Think of it as a key - the monitoring rig invariably has peaks and troughs, the engineer uses all tools at his disposal to get a great sound for the client, some of which inevitably and unknowingly flattens out those peak and troughs by adding the inverse of the response aberration with EQ. When playing back elsewhere those initial dips and troughs are removed, or worse replaced with equally severe ones at different points and it no longer sounds as intended. Kind of like trying to use your door key to get into a neighbours house, it won't work as the dips and troughs are all in the wrong place. It is exceptionally unlikely that a record will ever sound any better than when heard being recorded or mastered for a cut.
 
Sibbers said:
Even if recording equipment adds something that wasn't there in a live performance, I still want a neutral system because I want to hear what the producers final cut sounds like.
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The producers final cut isn't the final cut, from there it goes to ' mastering' which is is often done through more than one set of monitors. One of the goals of mastering is to optimise the recording for reproduction across a wide range of playback systems. So in effect it is being 'equalised' to sound good on a wide range of systems. That notwithstanding you will never hear what the mastering engineer hears unless you hear it on their system in their studio.

FWIW in my line of work I sometimes do get to hear albums in the very studios in which they were recorded and it isn't always a pleasant experience or something you would enjoy replicating at home.
 
King Size said:
FWIW in my line of work I sometimes do get to hear albums in the very studios in which they were recorded and it isn't always a pleasant experience or something you would enjoy replicating at home.
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A studio control room for a domestic living/listening room would sound odd. They do sound odd until you get used to the room treatment, big speakers and mixer in the way etc (I know YOU know this). I get into studios for work too and it does require readjustment.

Back to the point, enjoyability is key for me. I am sure my brain demands some neutrality to get this but I do like other elements such as dynamics and timing. Would I lose some of these in a quest for absolute neutrality, thinking of neutrality as frequency domain? For example my Decca London cart might not have the flatest FR but it's flat enough for me and has dynamics to make you jump. Music at home is for fun for me and not a listening experiment. But each to their own.
 
I go to quite a lot of live music concerts, some amplified, some not. Anybody who does the same will admit, if they are honest, that the hifi system produces, at best, a pale imitation of what we experience at a live concert.

So, rather than obsess over whether my system is transparent, I try to ask myself "does this make me feel the way I feel at a live gig?". My approach is therefore to choose a system which helps me recreate those feelings, as much as possible, as much of the time as possible. And to hell with transparency if the end result is achieved by different means.
 
King Size said:
The producers final cut isn't the final cut, from there it goes to ' mastering' which is is often done through more than one set of monitors. One of the goals of mastering is to optimise the recording for reproduction across a wide range of playback systems. So in effect it is being 'equalised' to sound good on a wide range of systems. That notwithstanding you will never hear what the mastering engineer hears unless you hear it on their system in their studio.

FWIW in my line of work I sometimes do get to hear albums in the very studios in which they were recorded and it isn't always a pleasant experience or something you would enjoy replicating at home.
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I think it's a shame when that happens, but it's not every case (the compromise, I mean). Can you imagine Steely Dan being optimised for iPhone earbuds? None the less, if it's mastered to sound crap I'd rather know about it and move on.

Our studio speakers/monitors are very revealing which does highlight the horrible stuff, and with certain mixes sometimes you'll wonder what on earth those guys think they are up to but when it's done right it sounds amazing and I don't want to miss out on that because I have a system that is biased towards a certain type of sound. A neutral system gives me the best opportunity to enjoy any music on.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
I go to quite a lot of live music concerts, some amplified, some and some not. Anybody who does the same will admit, if they are honest, that the hifi system produces, at best, a pale imitation of what we experience at a live concert.

So, rather than obsess over whether my system is transparent, I try to ask myself "does this make me feel the way I feel at a live gig?". My approach is therefore to choose a system which helps me recreate those feelings, as much as possible, as much of the time as possible. And to hell with transparency if the end result is achieved by different means.
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I agree with you on the importance of recreating those feelings.

But some setups get a hell lot closer than others on recreating the live event up to a level that IMO wouldn't be fair to call a pale imitation.
 
radamel said:
But some setups get a hell lot closer than others on recreating the live event up to a level that IMO wouldn't be fair to call a pale imitation.
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It's also worth noting that, most classical and jazz aside, recorded music is anything but a live event. Even a lot of jazz, e.g. Bitches Brew, On The Corner etc never happened, they were painstakingly assembled from multiple takes all cut 'n' shut together into a collage that could never be played live. This is the normal creation method for rock and pop music. Certainly most of the albums one finds in hi-fi dealers never happened in any real performance sense, so expecting them to sound like a band playing a gig is an absurd and hopeless blind alley to pursue. The only 'real' point of reference for this type of music is the studio control room sound at point of mixing. There is seldom even the slightest intent to create a 'live' illusion, a studio creation is something else entirely.
 
Stevie Wonder's Superstition is such an impossibility. There are apparently no fewer than eight clavinets! (all played by Stevie).
 
Michael J said:
Stevie Wonder's Superstition is such an impossibility. There are apparently no fewer than eight clavinets! (all played by Stevie).
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He may well have played the bass, drums and just about everything else too! There's not a lot Stevie Wonder can't play!
 
Base electronics should be and invariably are neutral/transparent. It's the 'speakers and the room match where the gross flavouring is introduced.

There is no excuse for coloured electronics since flavouring can be added to taste using EQ in whatever form is preferred. This is far better than opting for fundamentally coloured, and therefore sub standard basic design.

With speakers they are all 'wrong' so you need to choose your flavouring carefully, but gross colourations such as hollow, cupped-hands type effects are easily spotted and very common.
 
Tony L said:
It's also worth noting that, most classical and jazz aside, recorded music is anything but a live event. Even a lot of jazz, e.g. Bitches Brew, On The Corner etc never happened, they were painstakingly assembled from multiple takes all cut 'n' shut together into a collage that could never be played live. This is the normal creation method for rock and pop music. Certainly most of the albums one finds in hi-fi dealers never happened in any real performance sense, so expecting them to sound like a band playing a gig is an absurd and hopeless blind alley to pursue. The only 'real' point of reference for this type of music is the studio control room sound at point of mixing. There is seldom even the slightest intent to create a 'live' illusion, a studio creation is something else entirely.
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The live concerts I go to are either jazz or classical. I rarely buy rock and pop albums anymore, either. My comparison is therefore for the feelings I get when I listen to the CD, vs my recollection of how I felt at the gig. The closer I get with the degree of involvement with the music, the happier I am with the system. Don't really care whether it is accurate or transparent, to me that is just a promising route to an objective, not the objective itself.
 
I'm the opposite. The few concerts I went to in my yoof were always way to loud - I couldn't deal with it. So I only listen to recorded material.

What I'm after is for each instrument to sound like it should and for them to combine to make up a nice whole.

Because recordings vary so - some with weak bass, some with strong etc. etc. - and because my hearing is my hearing, my set up is adapted for me and my listening tastes. I therefore doubt it is neutral for others. Perhaps it could be described as 'neutral for me'..
 
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