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drdna wrote:

Yes, we are saying the same thing.  The problem as I have found it is that transparency is easily recognized and so there is a tendency for audiophiles to focus on this when they try to improve their systems, and this can make for very bad sounding results.

Actually, it is not exactly accurate. Most audiophiles do not focus on transparency but rather they preoccupied how make up this playback to be in compliance with artificial sonic template that was given to them. This is what the entire stupid audio hi-fi industry is built upon – inventing and selling bogus sonic templates and then to facilitate products that satisfies the demands of those templates.

drdna wrote:

I strive to make a neutral system instead, which sometimes means ignoring transparency.  The most recent example was the difference between the old London Decca Jubilee and the new London Decca Reference, which is easily the most transparent cartridge I have heard, but it loses some sense of neutrality, and I just don't connect to the music in the same way.

Well, I do understand what you mean when you said “sometimes ignoring transparency”. However, if to dig deeper then there is more to it. Transparency has own hierarchy: static transparency and dynamic transparency. The dynamic (active or vibrant) transparency is quite complicated subject that has a lot connection with Audio Neutrality. I am sure what when you propose to undermine the transparency then you meant the static transparency.

drdna wrote:

The problem I have is finding ways to guide how to make a system neutral since it is described not fully or well by language or intellectual parameters.  How can something so important be so difficult to manage?  Perhaps Romy and others have some suggestions?

Adrian, they are complicated things. The Audio Neutrality is not only the subject of audio but also a subject of general artistic evolvement of a listener. Audio Neutrality is associated with depth of musical messages and with adequacy of musical “consumption” via playback. Better music (better painting, better stage acting, better literature as so on) are filled with micro-rendering of human intentions in a language of the given art-form. In music those human intentions manifest themselves as very minute deviations of pace, tiny accents, micro-offset of tone and many other things that better musicians have at their disposal. A good actor can say a simple phase “It is my Cat” with a dozens different intonations and the meaning of that phase would be wary very considerable upon that way it which it was expressed. In music, since Sound is interpretive messenger, the capacities for “shadowing of the intentions” are the most powerful among many other art forms. In a good, intentions and expressions loaded musical piece, in hands of a capable and artistically advanced musician with a musical instilment, being interrupted but the musician consciousness the piece might become a very complex communicative bridge; the piece filled with many “pregnant” messages and with many potential sensations. Under better listening and social conditions a listener, being ethically, culturally and spiritually developed to the level where she or he is able to consume the sensations, might participate on the harvesting of those sensations….

So, we have expressed intentions and we have consumed intentions and this communication is built upon the equity and unanimity of human reactions to sonic irritations and equity and unanimity of human experiences. While there is not playback in the picture everything is fine but then when playback begins to reproduce Sound then playback modifies or even rearranges those in music imbedded “pregnant” messages as a result alters the content and value of the messages. There is nothing wrong with rearrangement of the messages if it was done by human awareness as human awareness would demonstrate own reasoning for the intrusion. However, a playback, being a machine has no reasoning but has only algorithms of exchange …

So, what in context of the said above what lay the Audio Neutrality? The Audio Neutrality is value responsible for perceptional transparency of the original messages and for the preservation of the messages’ potency

Well, the next question would be “how to make a system audio neutral”. There is no direct answer known to me as least in a format that I am wiling to share. However, I might drop some tips that might be useful for someone who is in a search for Audio Neutrality.

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