I mean neutral in the sense that it doesn't add anything to the music that doesnt belong, at least to my ears. this is obvious when you EQ them to Harman and they don't actually sound different. I can't stand bright headphones that's the only thing that will fatigue me with a headphone which is why they are amazing. They are the one headphone I will never get rid of, sennheiser's sound is what got me started into headphones.
Purely my own view of the state of the headphone community, not aimed at you but imho the semantics of what neutrality should mean or does mean is a massive point of confusion in head-fi dialogue.
I think it’s a common thing to acquire a mental model of neutrality from one’s initial experience with a hifi product, like the 650 or in the case of speakers, it’s often bookshelf sound that lacks bass and has a colored/euphonic optimization in its design.
When I refer to neutrality, what I am interested in is closer to studio monitoring or professional mixing environments. I am of the belief that neutrality should refer to as close to the sound in real life or ideal professional audio settings to inform what neutrality actually means.
And just as in real life there is variation in rooms or studios with how the sound shows up, so too should we not be overly dogmatic with Harman as an immutable truth.
In fact: Jude, Crinnacle and many others have pointed to the upper mids of Harman being somewhat over emphasized for their own tastes when comparing to their respective experiences with live sound. I think I fall into this camp as well.
You can see the trend of Apple AirPods Max and Sennheiser IE900/600 fitting into neutrality while relaxing that upper mids spike.
In the case of the VZR, I think it’s arguably aligned with this mids preference in how neutrality shows up.
Ok I’ll step down off the soapbox now. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.