The sound of it all

Everything in our systems has a sound to it; speakers and playback mediums the biggest culprits. What's fascinating to me is how each of us considers our system mostly neutral, when in fact our loudspeakers and medium are anything but. Take my main system as an example. The massive IRS V in Music Room One are considered by many to be of reference quality, meaning one can compare its performance against all other loudspeakers to gain perspective on the truth of reproduction. And yet we readily acknowledge these same reference standards deviate frequency response by several dB, phase response is all over the map. Don't believe me? Gaze at a Stereophile measurement of your favorite loudspeaker and you'll not see flat lines on any measurements. Each speaker has its own coloring of the sound. Let's not let reproduction equipment and mediums off the hook either. There's never been a perfect microphone making recordings. Each has a sound prized or despised by recording engineers. And vinyl, Or CDs, tubes vs. solid state? It makes my heads hurt jumping into that debate. Let's recognize each system has its own sound and it is that sound we adjust to in our listening environments, then call it neutral.