Recently I was emailing with a friend who’d asked me to recommend a new cartridge for his turntable. I recommended the Dynavector Karat 17dx and said that, while I didn’t know how neutral, accurate and transparent sounding his system was (given that I’d never heard it), on a system like mine that was built to maximize neutrality, the 17dx was, in my view, the perfect cartridge.

My friend replied:

“The only time I’ve listened to what I may consider a ‘neutral’ sound is when I’m playing my digital collection. I may be dead wrong on that, but digital files on my system sound pretty flat and neutral. My turntable on the other hand sounds totally different. Probably adding a lot of coloration?”

I understood what he was saying, but I felt he was misunderstanding what I meant by “neutral.” This got me thinking – what DID I mean by “neutral”? What IS “neutral” sound? What does “NEUTRAL,” in audio, really even mean?

I see the word pop up on forums and gear reviews with regularity. This or that amp or those cables sound “neutral.”  The word seems typically to denote something positive. “Neutral”, it would seem if you noodle around in the audiophile blogosphere, is a good thing and a thing to be sought out.

Despite this, if my friend’s comment was any indicator there seemed to be a limited understanding of what “neutral,” in audio, actually is. In my friend’s case, for instance, “neutral” did not mean something positive. For him, “neutral” denoted something “flat” and “totally different” from the sound he likes.

As I pondered the concept of neutrality in audio I decided, ultimately, that the meaning of “neutral” was better understood in terms of what it wasn’t than what it was. “Neutral,” for example, is not colored. “Neutral” is not “warm” or “bright” or “analytical,” to employ some other popular audiophile jargon. “Neutral,” in fact, is simply not a sound that calls attention to itself.

Which got me thinking this way – what is it that we’re seeking, above all else, in audio? Well, I suppose that really depends on the audiophile that’s seeking it. For a long time I was seeking a “warm” sound that was as free as possible from edginess or harshness. I wanted a sound that would allow me to listen for a long time without fatigue.

This kept me in tube gear for a many years because, at least at the volumes at which I was playing my music at that time, tube gear seemed to reproduce music in a way that made it easier to listen to for longer periods without feeling wrecked by it. I wanted to be able to just relax and enjoy myself when I played music. Nothing wrong with that right?

Well, I suppose not, but then one day, after I’d gotten bigger and better speakers, I thought to turn up the volume a bit more and I realized there was a WHOLE NEW WORLD up there that I’d never really experienced before! It’s a world where I could not just HEAR the drum kit, but actually FEEL it! It’s a world where the bass wasn’t just providing rhythm but was an instrument that could be experienced in a visceral way on it’s own terms. It’s a world where I began to more fully appreciate the POWER and EXCITEMENT of the performance.

This new world of audiophile listening was and is, intoxicating, and it became the driving force behind what I ultimately wanted my system to sound like. As I acquired better sounding records to play, this new world began to take shape in a way that was simultaneously surprising and self evident.

Gradually the point of this crazy hobby started to come into sharper focus. I began to see clearly what sound I wanted my system to have. I could see that what I wanted to hear, as near as was possible on an audio system playing back a recording, was what the musicians REALLY sounded like there in the studio or on the stage when they were recorded. I wanted a sound that, quite simply, made me feel like I was there for the performance.

With this clarity of purpose driving me forward, I started to make a great many changes to my system. First, I tried replacing my expensive aftermarket power cords for the factory supplied cheap ones my amp and preamp had come with. I could hear immediately that the tonal qualities of the sound improved with the factory power cords. Instruments sounded more natural and lifelike, not to mention more transparent. (More on my experience with power cords HERE)

Next I swapped the garden hoses I was using for speaker cable with doubled up very basic 12 gauge speaker wire in their place. The sound was immediately, well, more immediate. It sounded like the music on the record was finding a more direct and unobstructed path to my speakers. I was hearing everything I’d been hearing with the garden hoses, but the dynamics and tonal accuracy were better, as was the transparency, and rather dramatically so I might add!

Next, on a friend’s recommendation, I bought a 70’s era Japanese integrated amplifier to see if I might prefer it to the sound of my modern tube gear. The unit I bought, as these units often do, has a preamp output and amp in, allowing me to first compare the amplifier in the integrated to my tube amp while using my same tube preamp and phono stage. It didn’t take me long to hear that, when using the amp in this vintage unit, my system sounded cleaner, more tightly focused and overall more natural.

Next I outputted the phono stage from my preamp to the auxiliary input on the vintage integrated so I could hear my system with both the amp and preamp of the vintage unit. That was yet another step in the right direction.

Then I started trying out old pairs of interconnects I had accumulated over the years in place of my expensive cables. Much to my surprise, the oldest and the cheapest pair, the very first “audiphile” interconnects I’d ever bought in fact, sounded better to me than the $2k pair I’d been using! (More on my experience with interconnects HERE)

The sound of my system was changing and changing fast. I was finding myself a bit taken aback at the speed at which I was making these changes, and surprised by the decisiveness with which I was listing and selling off much of my expensive gear. Meanwhile it was downright thrilling to hear my best sounding records coming to life in ways I’d never thought possible!

Next I added Townshend Seismic Isolation Platforms under the integrated and my turntable. Then I put a buckwheat pillow under my phono stage. Then I upgraded my phono stage. Piece by piece, change by change I was getting closer to the sound I wanted – the sound of live music.

Now that I’ve added a solid state phono stage that I’m absolutely BONKERS for with a power cord that actually IMPROVES the sound, along with a Dynavector Karat 17dx that I’m still breaking in,  I’m finding that my system sounds both wonderful and wonderfully . . . well . . . neutral.

I’ve realized that neutral IS the sound of live music. Neutral IS the sound of the master tape. Neutral, in short, IS the sound I’ve been seeking and the sound that is the penultimate in analog audio.

Is it a sound that is possible to achieve in total? Of course not. ALL gear imparts some degree of coloration. We can’t ever have a system that is COMPLETELY neutral as that would be a system without any equipment at all. That WOULD be live music!

Is it the sound ALL audiophiles are looking for? I doubt it. As I have discovered on my journey thus far, while all audio gear imparts some degree of coloration, some imparts a great deal more, and the more “audiophile” that gear is the more coloration it tends to impart. Therefore I believe most audiophiles systems are pretty far away from neutral sounding.

The good news is that it is very possible to make an analog audio system sound more natural, more lifelike and more “you are there” by building that system to be as neutral as possible. If we use the right records and we learn to play them back properly, these records become our guide to better sound. Then we simply build the system that can play those records back as accurately as possible.

Great records are great because they are natural and lifelike and true sounding. Great audio systems convey the music on those records in a natural and lifelike way because they tend to be very neutral sounding systems. Great analog systems, therefore, are those that manage to get out of their own way and simply let the music speak for itself.