What does "Warm" mean?

It’s nice to listen together, after a while we describe what we hear, and know what we agree on, mine/yours/his systems, various cartridges, ...

To me, there is a difference between ’Presence’ (midrange slightly elevated) and ’Warm’ a characteristic rather than a frequency variation. 

My and many vintage speakers have Level Controls to adjust the speakers in whatever space they find themselves and for the users preferences.

Mine are called ’Presence’ and ’Brilliance’. In a hard reverberant space, you might cut the highs to avoid too bright, shrill, brittle, edgy: find the right word. The presence has not been frequency boosted, but the listener is more relaxed and the sound is more enjoyable, the presence more apparent. I would not call that warm either, just tamed.

I went for extended bass when younger, but I came to think that was not so important, and in fact, I think what I and other people like most about my speakers is related to ’not too much bass’. (they are 15" huge magnets, weigh 37 lbs each,16 ohm highly efficient, bass is not lacking, just not further extended).

As I have said many times, Bass can be directional, i.e. Stereo Bass, always consider the overtones, and when there is less low room filling mono bass, and all the omni-directional reflections of that, everyone remarks on how the imaging of Jazz bass players and the sounds of bass decay are wonderful. Can less bass produce ’warmer’ bass? Not frequency emphasized, but a purposeful lack of extension, again, more apparent, not frequency emphasized.

Certainly well executed extended low bass is amazing, but mostly large spaces, larger than mine.

Inability to come to a conclusion on the color of sound. Even color pallet added to the discussion to aid you and you all still can’t do it. Embarrassing!

Raul,

I agree with you.  The Technics is definitely more neutral, clearly offers better definition.  And yet the Denon is just lovely for casual listening.  Of course my VPI HW-40 is better than the Technics, but only a little bit.  When I was younger these things mattered more to me.  I don't know how much of that to attribute to my ears and how much to maturity.  There was a time when Rega's approach was not appealing to me.  Not long ago I had occasion to "set up" a P8 for a guy using AnalogMagik.  Actually all I did was verify that it did not need to be set up, it performed just fine right out of the box.  Excellent without qualification.  There is a lot to be said for that approach.  I would really like to have a chance to compare a Rega Naia to my HW-40.  

@billstevenson  I was a Naval officer….

Thanks for serving. I live in Silicon Valley and am disappointed that many don’t appreciate the military protection of our peace and freedom.

@lewm I think of warm as a coloration. 

My SS is neutral, Audionet Humboldt.
But my 2nd system is using a 100db Volti Rival (neutral within budget) to discover tube midrange magic (pleasing distortion) starting with SET amps. Got a Coincident 300b v2 Frankenstein yet to be hooked up. WE 300b tubes very expensive, but seems it’s something to hear in one’s lifetime.

I’m a bucket list late to the table audiophile trying to sample various top audio presentations. 

warm is the opposite of analytical (not the opposite of bright)

It should be relaxing and "lazy" as opposed to stimulating. 

To me bright is wrong (in the chain), whereas analytical and warm are both correct, depending on the setup. The pros always say: warm source, analytical amp, neutral speakers: perfect result, or some combination of the above. Warm can be as realistic as analytical, just from a different seat in the concert hall.