I believe it’s possible to have both warmth and analytical in the same system.
in my system I have the highly analytical Benchmark DAC and amp combined with a classically warm vintage Conrad Johnson preamp. I believe I have the best of both worlds.
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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@rvpiano when something is analytical, to me it's not warm. Maybe it's just semantics and I'd use the word "detailed" |
Bill, you are describing attributes of individual instruments as they are in the real world. I thought we were talking about "warm" as a descriptive for a system or any part of a familiar system which, when added into that system, like a cartridge, phono stage, etc., makes it more warm. In other words, you start with a system which sounds one way, and when you add component X, the sound becomes (more) warm. That is the subject I was addressing. One big problem we all have is that we try to reduce auditory sensations to words so that others can know what we are hearing. Language often fails at this task. Or if it does not fail utterly, I find that words are at least too emphatic. |
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