THIS IS A REVISED VERSION OF AN ARTICLE ORIGINALLY POSTED IN JANUARY 2022

A while back I was emailing with a friend who’d asked me to recommend a new cartridge for his turntable. I recommended the cartridge I use, the Dynavector Karat 17dx. I told him 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 felt my friend was misunderstanding what I meant by “neutral.” Which got me thinking – what did I mean? What is “neutral” sound? What does NEUTRAL, in audio, really even mean?

I see this word pop up on forums and gear reviews with regularity. This amp or that set of cables are “neutral” sounding.  The word typically seems to denote something positive. “Neutral”, it would seem if you’re noodling around in the audiophile blogosphere, is a good thing, and something worth seeking out.

Despite this, if my friend’s comment was any indication, there seemed to be a limited understanding of what neutral, in audio, actually means. 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 is a sound that doesn’t call attention to itself.

Which got me thinking about it this way – what is it, in audio, that we’re seeking, above all else? I suppose that depends on who’s doing the seeking. 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 many years because, at least at the volumes at which I was playing my music then, tube gear seemed to reproduce music in a way that made it easier to listen 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?

Then one day, after I’d gotten bigger and better speakers, I thought to turn up the volume a bit more. That’s when I discovered there was a WHOLE NEW WORLD up there that I’d never actually 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 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 each 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 more clearly what sound I wanted my system to have, and that that sound needed to be as close as possible to what the musicians really sounded like, right there in the studio or up on 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, 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 compared the aftermarket cords I’d been using. 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 very basic, doubled up 12 gauge speaker wire. The sound was immediately, well, . . . more immediate! It sounded like the music on the record was taking a more direct and unobstructed path to my speakers, and then to my ears. 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, had a preamp output and amp in, allowing me to first compare the amplifier in the integrated to my tube amp, meanwhile 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 the interconnects I had accumulated over the years in place of my much more expensive cables. Much to my surprise, the oldest and cheapest pair, the very first “audiophile” 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!

Soon I added Townshend Seismic Isolation Platforms under my integrated amp 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.

I discovered that the sound I wanted from my system was less about my system and more about the records I was playing. When I was listening to a record on my system, I didn’t actually want to hear my system. I wanted to hear the record and the music on it. I wanted the sound of live music.

And for my system to reproduce a recording on a record in a way that it sounded like live music, it needed to do as little as possible with that recording outside of simply bringing it to life. This, I learned, is what neutral in audio really meant.

Neutral, in audio, 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 essential piece of the sound that is the penultimate of analog audio.

Is it a sound that’s possible to achieve in entirety? It isn’t. All gear imparts some amount 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 simply be live music!

Is it the sound all audiophiles are looking for? I doubt it. As I’ve discovered 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 that, despite whatever efforts audiophiles may or may not make in name of neutrality, most audiophile systems these days are pretty far away from neutral sounding, and that appears to suit most audiophile just fine.

But for those of us who are tired of the colorations introduced by many of the audio products out there, thankfully, there is a way to build a neutral sounding analog system. And the more neutral that system is, the more natural it will sound, and the more lifelike, and the more it will give us that “you are there” experience we crave.

Great records are great because they are recorded and mastered to sound natural, lifelike and true. Great analog systems are great at playing great records because great systems get out of their own way and let the music speak for itself.