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In the Forum: Playback Listening
In the Thread: The Sound and How We Hear It
Post Subject: Distortion and neutralityPosted by drdna on: 11/9/2008
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 Paul S wrote:
"neutrality' is not to be confused with "bland", nor does it allow for much "distortion".; In other words, "neutrality" is for me an ideal based on my own Sense of the Sound, and, obviously, I never thought of it in the terms you're proposing.
Naturally there will be some audiophiles enamored with sensational artifactual sounds, with the physical appearance of vacuum tubes and blue LED’s, with the theory of circuit design extant of the sound, etc. However, for those audiophiles concerned with tuning their systems to the Sound, I am suggesting that the process is necessarily subjective and idiosyncratic – that there is no one objective perfect stereo set-up because we all hear differently.

Most of the terms we use are shaped by the audio reviewers who have applied them to different stereo components. Thus, when I say “neutral” I actually refer to the sonic signature I hear with most components that have been described as “neutral.” I am not referring to true neutrality the way it has been discussed in other threads on that topic. This is because based on what I am saying about how we all have the same goal but all hear differently, while we may have a goal of “true neutrality,” a component or a system could NEVER be described as neutral, since we all hear differently and thus differently tuned systems will be necessary for each listener to achieve true neutrality.

The idea of distortion is an interesting subject. There are clearly many different types of distortion that occur. Why? We have many different ways of describing characteristics of stereo components: soundstage, timbre, dynamics, transparency, etc. However, this implies that there can be a specific defect (i.e., type of distortion) for each of these descriptors existing mutually exclusively. Thus, it is not as simple as saying, “I don’t like distortion.”

Again, nobody likes distortion, but the types and amounts of distortion each individual can tolerate may be variable. Hence what may sound “musical” to one person may sound “horribly distorted” to another listener.

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