The exact opposite of bright. Inviting, smooth and fatigue free listening for hours without losing interest with no compromise in dynamics and drive. You can warm up a bright system with some more bass (lower, mid and upper).
What does "Warm" mean?
In his post today Paul McGowan ([email protected]) had a pretty good post on the subject of warmth. Here is his definition: "The word usually points at a few related things. There's a slight rise in the lower midrange and upper bass — the region where male voices, cellos, lower piano notes, and the body of most instruments live. There's a softness at the very top, a rounding off of transient energy that feels easier on the ear over long sessions. And there's a sense of weight and body in the music, a presence that makes acoustic instruments feel three-dimensional rather than etched in air. When all three of those things show up together, listeners reach for "warm" because nothing else describes it as quickly."
Paul then goes on to discuss both the good and the bad of this set of characteristics. In general I associate warmth with harmonic distortion, but prefer it to the stridency or harshness that I associate with intermodular distortion. I think most people would agree. Since we all live with a certain amount of distortion, more in analog than in digital playback, I wonder what others think about warmth, or lack of same, and their tolerance or lack of same in their own listening preferences.
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I can hear the overall color of a system. Warm is literally cream through red to dull brown depending on the level or density of warmth. I've noticed that if the system sounds yellow, music loses its native color and is too sickly to listen too. The worst systems have a chromium color stripping away emotion from the soul of the music. For me, my main system is uncolored allowing the music itself to present its own spectrum. |
I think Paul nailed it. Audio sound descriptions are complicated, and basically involve it’s own slang without the benefit of a common known guideline of what the terms actually mean. |
It is very interesting that you are equating sound with color. The late Bob Fulton, famous creator of the Fulton J speaker, used to give a very entertaining lecture on the colors of sound as he heard them. Warm sound warm colors, cool sound cool colors sort of thing. I am not doing this justice unfortunately. @noromance has the right idea. Comparing my Technics SL1200 GAE (bright white, better detail) to my Denon DP-3000NE (softer focus, warmer) is what particularly prompted my interest in the subject. If I want to just kick back and relax and let the music envelop me, warmer, softer is what works best. This is a new discovery for me. Something about myself that I did not know before. |
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