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

Warm and details as opposing values come from gear marketing which isolated them a selling points ...They are always related because if they existed together in  + or in -  anyway they exist correlated to an acoustic context...They are not born from the gear pieces like a man from a virgin...

In acoustics "timbre" definition as perception and as phenomenon is defined by 5 factors, none is related to " warm" qualities nor to "details" qualities, adjective used in audio gear reviews and marketing to describe gear qualities out of any acoustic context "per se" or "per design"...

Then a good "timbre" perception and playback translation must be warm or cold and detailed or less detailed it is dependent of the live event , of the recording trading-off set of choices, it is  also dependent of our system/room translation...

The goal of good engineering as said atmasphere , and the goal of room acoustics, and the goal of the sound engineer is to make them related to one another  in a way that will match  the acoustic circumstances under consideration.

Speaking of them as separated is a legacy of marketing not of acoustics ...

viber6    @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.

Of course. The Katie’s voice in my recording has my room sound. My mics are 7ft from speakers. The Katie’s mouth in the original recording is only few inches away from the microphone. Alex/Wavetouch audio

Original -- Katie Melua - Wondeful life

Wavetouch audio - Katie Melua - Wondeful life

I’d challenge any one to listen to a system with a mythical flat frequency response and say they like it.

@nubiann - Well, as always we have to distinguish between close mich, quasi anechoic flat and flat in room.  No one likes flat at the listening position.  

There are a number of house curves though, such as Harmon and B&K, or even the default used by say Dirac.  Not flat, generally peak around 100 Hz and descend gently about 1-2 db/octave. 

So the question to me isn't flat vs. not flat, as flat is really not very listenable, but about smooth vs. not.  Some of the smoothest speakers I hear are Magico, Revel and Monitor audio, and Fritz too, of course.  I like them a great deal, though I find Magico VERY smooth but also kind of cool. 

Those brands seem to do pretty well IMHO, but so do others which take different outlooks.  

A dimension not discussed nearly enough however is dynamic range and compression.  A speaker that measures flat at 1 W may not at 5. 

@viber6 

"Does it give the SPL on transients?"

Readings are in dB for instantaneous levels so you will see the digital readouts to tenths of a dB of immediate changes in volume from ppp to fff and beyond. Wonderful legato phrases with crescendo and/or decrescendo markings are seen as a stream of digits in one direction or the other. 

"One thing I don't like about apps is the possibility of intrusive ads.  Any problem with this NIOSH app?"

NIOSH is a federal agency under the umbrella of the CDC so there are no ads whatsoever.