If Warmth Is a Distortion, Why Do So Many Audiophiles Still Defend It?

@mihorn Forgive me if I come to the wrong conclusion from your recordings when listening to flawed audio from my computer.  FWIW, I heard conventional tonal balance.   The Katie Melua recording of the voice has a fair amount of ambience, either natural or processed.  The Eric Clapton recording is more immediate, although it is hard to judge, since the volume level is low.  

The famous Nils Lofgren CD, Acoustic Live has demonstration quality sound.  But it is processed, with major boost in HF.  Cut 5 is "Keith don't go."  This is great for mid and upper bass guitar transients.  The low note E at 82 Hz is repeated many times.  But the most useful cut for me is the first, "You."  This contains vigorous guitar strums which showcase midrange/HF transients.

@earthbound It will surprise many readers that for all my talk about natural sound,  I endorse some recordings like Lofgren which are processed.  The guitar is definitely upfront stage type of sound, although the voice is muffled.  Unfortunately, most classical music recordings are designed to have mid hall type of sound.  This suits the experiences of most concertgoers who sit in the mid hall position.  At home, I use the Rane ME60 original version EQ which has 30 1/3 octave sliders, +/- 12 dB at all these freq from 20-20kHz.  With such commercial recordings, I boost HF from 8-20 kHz in variable amounts depending on the individual recording. The bands overlap, so there actually is some boost at freq down to 2 kHz.  Although my practice certainly is not what recording engineers intended to produce, it gives me a simulation of what the 1st row sounds like.  I am not an audio professional, so I don't have access to recording major classical artists, I have refined my techniques when I make recordings of amateurs and a few professional groups.  The Lofgren recording is well done for capturing the excitement of live acoustic stage sound. 

I encourage people to get used Rane ME60 original units, cheap on eBay.  I don't use any preamp. I have tried medium priced preamps.  They all inject significant veiling via the extra electronics.  I've not tried super expensive line stage preamps, but this Rane when set to 0 dB on all 30 bands has good transparency equal or better than the preamps I've tried.  But the ability to modify laid back veiled recordings is a BIG bonus, and far outweighs any slight tonal modification.  All this despite the crude small volume control on the Rane. Just be judicious, and stay out of the critical midrange.  Using this EQ will have greater benefits for your audio system than most any other intervention.  Preamps, CD players, DAC's, cables--all of these have minor effects compared to using EQ judiciously.  What about  speakers?  This is probably THE most critical component.  However, the best speaker fed natural, unprocessed recordings intended to sound like mid hall is a reject for me.  It is better for musical info retrieval to have a somewhat lesser speaker with judicious EQ to simulate sound much closer to musicians.

So now call me a preference camp member trying to change the system to my tastes.  But look at it this way--I am trying to capture in my audio system the real thing heard close up, such as from the conductor's enviable position.  I can only move in that direction by undoing lots of the choices made by engineers to capture mid hall sound.  If I got free tickets for a mid hall seat, I would go solely to enjoy the artistry of the musicians while hating the mid hall sound.  I still enjoy poor youtube audio from 1930's recordings of my favorite violinists.  Making my choices to undo poor choices of recording engineers is equivalent to the morality of fighting in self defense against attackers.  

@sargonicuse Thanks for the NIOSH meter tip.  Does it give the SPL on transients?  I did like the Radio Shack meter fast response A weighting.  One thing I don't like about apps is the possibility of intrusive ads.  Any problem with this NIOSH app?

any sound signature — warm, tube-like, analogue, ultra-wide, hyper-detailed, and everything in between

While these things might seem to be at opposite ends of a spectrum, they are not. You can have all these things at the same time.

@atmasphere I respect your electronics expertise.  My experience with audio systems is that warm sounds come at the sacrifice of detail.  And detailed audio leans in the direction of cool.  However, what you said is only applicable to live music heard from a close distance.  But even that is only partially true.  Every time I take a walk and listen to sounds of nature, I ask myself whether these sounds are warm or cool.  Listen carefully to the low level crisp sound of stepping on dry leaves, bird calls, the breeze, ocean waves, louder sounds like slamming the microwave oven door, harsh dog barking.  If you've traveled to Europe, listen to street car bells, low freq bongs of large bells in the town square.  These sounds are cool, nothing but the raw, dry sound without fuzzy overlay of soft materials.  If the bell were coated by fabric, it would sound warm and fuzzy, like warm audio electronics lacking detail. My most recent eye-opener was hearing the true bright, COOL crisp sound of a golf club hitting the hard golf ball.  On regular low fidelity TV, I never heard that--it sounded mushy.

Decades ago, I had a Van Alstine modded Dyna PAS-3 tube preamp.  It sounded like the real thing, but only in comfortable relief in comparison to 1970's SS preamps which were harsh.  Later I got a Theta tube preamp which was much more detailed than the PAS.  It was also tonally cooler than the PAS.  Then I substituted Roger Madjeski tubes with the highest specs.  The sound got cooler still, accompanied by more detail.  I came to realize that my early preference for euphonic, warm sound was not consistent with the reality that natural sounds are mainly cool.  But they are coherent and smooth.

Back to the concert hall.  Cellos heard close have a raw texture, quite unlike the warmer sound heard further away.  The primary reason for this is the preferential absorption of HF and ambient reflections which are more numerous at greater distance. The reflections sum to more phase anomalies which basically are heard as tonal smearing.  This may be somewhat analogous to higher even order harmonics heard in warm tube electronics.  My analogy is loose.  Still it confirms the correlation I make between warmth and inaccuracy whether in audio systems or live sound. 

Comparing the live sound of cellos heard close, they have varying degrees of coolness and warmth.  I knew and heard Nathaniel Rosen playing his Montagnana cello from late 18th century.  Those 18th century instruments generally sound warmer than modern instruments.  Surprisingly, this Montagnana was quite cool and raw, shocking.  But all the cellos, violins, winds that I have heard live at close range are much cooler than recordings of them played on warm dynamic, inaccurate speakers with warm electronics.

My experience with audio systems is that warm sounds come at the sacrifice of detail.  And detailed audio leans in the direction of cool.

@viber6  This is a common experience but it does not have to be that way. Most of that is simply how the amp or preamp makes distortion, to which our ears assign a tonality.