I always think of it in terms of temperature, because music is a lot about how it makes you feel: Cold and lifeless, cool and distant, warm and sluggish, hot and irritating; yet, it can also be cool and collected or warm and inviting etc. There's a fine line between the different temperatures/descriptions and I think one thing to keep in mind is that the opposite of warm is not cold but cool. Since our own temperature fluctuates, what is warm one day can seem cool the next and viceversa. So that's another reason to seek a neutral balance (I don't care too much about reproducing what is exactly on the record). I usually prefer my drums to be relatively hot and electronic instruments to be relatively cold, but woodwinds have to be warm (if not either the player sucks, the recording sucks, or my system sucks :P). But this comes naturally. That to me is the whole point of being accurate. You have to screw up to make a warm sounding instrument sound cold.
