A subjective term used in audio to indicate how easily and how much of the sound of the live event comes through a recording when played through an audio system. Systems with a high level of transparency, a good thing, enable the listener to hear more of the live event. ransparency simply means that the electronics used to reproduce the sound do not discolor it with their own sounds but instead “move out of the way” to let the sound of the event come through. A highly transparent system may let a listener hear a musician take a breath before singing a line while a more muddied, non-transparent system would not allow the listener to hear such subtlety. ransparency is a combination of all the components in an audio system working in concert to achieve an end result. While a given amplifier may be extremely transparent on its own, if it is used to drive a muddy speaker, the end result will not be a transparent system. Think of transparency as looking through a window – on the other side of the window is the band; with a transparent system you can easily see the band and watch them play in full detail, however, with a dirty window (less transparency) it is more difficult to make out the band and the details.