On Tonal Colour

Largely based on a true story.

A bunch of audiophile buddies met online during this stay-at-home period, and the topic turned to Tonal Colour.

That is, the different tonal colours produced by different hi-fi systems - that which gives each system its own distinctive sound/tone/character/presentation when playing the same piece of music from the same recording (the Chinese audiophiles among us refer to it as '音色' or in Cantonese 'yam sek'). Note that we are not talking about the tonal colour of musical instruments here, which allows the listener to recognize what type of musical instrument it is.

I have heard a system's tonal colour described variously as golden hued, warm, cool, icy cold, saturated, light, washed out (and also the dreaded 'neutral', which some take it to imply blandness/emotionless😉, though to me true neutrality is a positive thing) etc..

The discussion went thus:

A: "Is there such a thing as a 'correct' tonal colour, which implies also then that there are wrong ones? Or that tonal colour is a matter of the owner's personal taste, i.e., it is about what I like or dislike?"

B: "I take it as a visceral matter, a matter of the heart. There is no standard, everyone can have a different taste, no right or wrong. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder."

C: "As long as the portrayal of musical instruments is still distinguishable, then it should be ok, I feel that if an audiophile emphasizes on tuning his system to a tonal colour that he likes, he may stray onto the wrong path. He will get an imbalanced sound. Like, every recording sounds warm, or voluptuous or whatever..."

B: "As long as the system has good balance, tuning the tonal colour is a sprinkling of flavour on top, it is personal taste."

D: "Let's use photos as an analogy. Look at these photos then, their colour balance is equivalent to a hi-fi system's tonal colour.

Which one is right? Which one is wrong? Or there is no right or wrong, just which one you think is the most beautiful in your eyes?"

E: "Looks like A was taken at 7 o'clock in the morning; B at noon time; C at 7pm. I think the colour in every photo is skewed somewhat."

D: "Well, the same photo can be made to look like it was taken at 7am, 12 noon or 7pm. However, the photo must have been taken at one specific time! The 'true picture' can only be revealed if the camera that captured the image and the subsequent production of that image do not involve an iota of alteration.

The camera is analogous to the recording process, the image production is our hi-fi system's replay.

The recording process is in the past tense already, an audiophile can no longer control/influence it but to accept the recording, in whatever media, as it is. What we can control is the choice of our hi-fi equipment and system tuning for the replay. If you want to replay the recording as faithfully as possible, then you'd look to build a system that does not alter (much of) anything - this, to me, is what our hi-fi hobby, as in High Fidelity, means."

F: "I understand now. Whatever the cook serves us, we just eat it, without adding any additional salt, sauce, or MSG, right? LOL!"

D: "What about this photo then? Does anyone think it is 'wrong'?"

E: "The colour is over-saturated leh."

G:"All this intellectual discussion is well and good. I think a system is to serve its master ultimately. So as long as I enjoy what I hear from MY system, then it is good enough for ME, any other hi-fi description is irrelevant!"

All: " Hear! Hear!"

The End. 😊