What is “warmth” and how do you get it?


Many audiophiles set out to assemble a system that sounds “warm.” I have heard several systems that could be described that way. Some of them sounded wonderful. Others, less so. That got me wondering: What is this thing called “warmth”?

It seems to me that the term “warm” can refer to a surprising number of different system characteristics. Here are a few:

1. Harmonic content, esp. added low order harmonics
2. Frequency response, esp. elevated lower midrange/upper bass
3. Transient response, esp. underdamped (high Q) drivers for midrange or LF
4. Cabinet resonance, esp. some materials and shapes
5. Room resonance, esp. some materials and dimensions

IME, any of these characteristics (and others I haven’t included) can result in a system that might be described as “warm.”

Personally, I have not set out to assemble a system that sounds warm, but I can see the appeal in it. As my system changes over time, I sometimes consider experimenting more with various kinds of “warmth.” With that in mind…

Do you think some kinds of warmth are better than others?

Thanks for your thoughts.

Bryon
bryoncunningham
Bryon, exactly. It’s like using the word ‘blue’ to describe a color. It only gets you in the ball park unless you describe the hue, intensity (value), contrast, gradation etc. in known terms. In my experiences warmth is relative and is dependent on context. To complicate things, as system accuracy improves and smaller differences become larger, not everyone describes these differences in the same absolute terms. A neutral system compared to a sterile system will sound warm(er) and can be described that way as more natural, neutral etc. A system can be neutral but as a requirement must have warmth. Because accurate tone can be difficult to describe, the word warmth is helpful in describing the accuracy of that tone. "The sax was warm and round sounding, as if it were in the room." could be an acceptable statment. Of course the term can also be used to describe a system that is too warm.

Ambient information, or ‘air’, which is key in recreating the recording space is not necessarily the same as warmth. A sterile system can and frequently does have lots of ambient information, but lacks body or warmth.

Recording studios can and usually are 'warm', dead maybe, designed to lack reverberations to control the sound, but not usually characterized as cold. Great pains are taken to control studio acoustics.

All instruments, some more than others have a degree of directionality, so your listening position in relationship to them (distance and direction) will affect the sound perceived. The same is true for microphones. Close miked sources can have more high frequency energy than you would hear from a normal listening position. In addition, the proximity effect of microphones increases bass response of the signal the closer you place a mike to a source like a guitar or vocalist. A lot of singers like this effect as it adds richness to their voices. When you hear a studio singer, you are usually hearing it from the perspective of the singers mouth on your nose (where the mike would be), being played through speakers in front of you. Hardly a 'natural' situation. Instruments, room acoustics, microphone and equipment selection and placement, multi tracking, all manner of tweaking and manipulating the sound after it is captured, and lots more must be accounted for in the recording process to create a recording to give what they hope you consider a natural sounding perspective. In general, its unrealistic to think a recording would ever be heard exactly that way live. Although it’s amazing it works as well as it does...well, sometimes anyway.
it would facilitate communication if there were "standard" definitions for terms frquently used in discussion so that each of us would not have to qualify or explain the denotation or connotation of terms used in a sentence.

there are many words that are so frequently used, such as warm, rich, lean, thin, bright, wide sound stage, deep sound stage, out of phase, and other familiary used words.

while systems are different, as our ears , brains ad preferences, terms could have a shared meaning so that in the context of a stereo system, the meaning would be clear.

how to do this ??

i suppose someone could propose a list of terms and their definitions and then those definitions could be discussed until there was an acceptances of a definition.

i think there are more experienced audiophiles than muyself who could propose a definition of the terms i alluded to above, but if asked, i would be willing to provide a definition.

i don't consider myself an authority and if someone wants to offer definitions i think such an undertaking would be greatly appreciated.

this is especially the case when some one asks for advice regarding an aspect of sound, such as "bright" and the posters would understand to a large extent, what was meant by the term.

this discussion of warmth illustartes the differences in connotation that each of us use when saying the word "warm".

i think precision and clarity would ad directness and eliminate the necessity for explantions.
Definitions will only get you in the ball park. Its about communicating effectively. This is the difference between a good equipment reviewer and a lesser one. Audiophile terms help, but the good reviewer gives you a better sense of the sound through better descriptions and context.
One thing I’ve noticed about the various characteristics that go by the term ‘warmth’ in the context of playback is that most or all of them seem like ADDITIONS to the signal. For example, ADDITIONAL low order harmonics, ADDITIONAL lower midrange/upper bass, ADDITIONAL ambience provided by the listening room, and so on.

Strictly speaking, any additions to the signal (other than gain) are deviations from accuracy. For that reason, I think many audiophiles, myself included, are tempted to eschew them. But lately I've been having second thoughts about that attitude. I’m starting to wonder about the relative merits of the following two characteristics:

1. Accuracy to the recording
2. Accuracy to the recorded event

The relative merits of accuracy-to-the-recording vs. accuracy-to-the-recorded event has periodically occurred to me ever since, on the neutrality thread, Al wrote this:

12-02-09: Almarg
A perfectly accurate system…would be one that resolves everything that is fed into it, and reproduces what it resolves with complete neutrality. Another way of saying that is perhaps that what is reproduced at the listener's ears corresponds precisely to what is fed into the system.

Which does not necessarily make that system optimal in terms of transparency. Since the source material will essentially always deviate to some degree and in some manner from being precisely accurate relative to the original event, then it can be expected that some deviation from accuracy in the system may in many cases be complementary to the inaccuracies of the recording (at least subjectively), resulting in a greater transparency into the music than a more precisely accurate system would provide.

Which does not mean that the goals of accuracy and transparency are necessarily inconsistent or in conflict. It simply means, as I see it, that the correlation between them, although substantial, is less than perfect.

Al makes his point about accuracy in terms of neutrality vs. transparency, in keeping with the nomenclature of that thread, but it is essentially the same distinction as accuracy-to-the-recording vs. accuracy-to-the-recorded-event, or Recording Accuracy vs. Event Accuracy, for short.

I agree with Al that Recording Accuracy correlates with Event Accuracy, but not perfectly so. In other words, I now believe that efforts to maximize Recording Accuracy sometimes come at the expense of Event Accuracy, which is a viewpoint that, I suspect, more experienced audiophiles tend to adopt, but has taken me some time to appreciate. A turning point for me was an observation that Albert Porter made in an old digital vs. analog thread, which I read only recently:

09-12-08: Albertporter
The digital (or analog) master tape is not the issue here, the CD format is.

If any of you could hear a master digital tape (or hard drive) and compare that to CD or LP, you would realize how much we've been screwed. The problem with digital is when that great master is "moved" for public distribution…

Moving that master digital signal from one place to another and from one sample rate to another does it so much harm it cannot be repaired. Then to make matters worse, our only choice is an outdated format that's too low a sample rate to replicate what was on the master…

With CD, you get a severely downsampled format that's only a shadow of what could be if the format had evolved this last 25 years.

This observation resonated with me, as I have had the experience of recording, editing, and mixing with high quality professional equipment, to create a master recording I was proud of. I then watched - dismayed - as my master recording was compressed, downrez'd, and finally, transferred to its delivery format. Even on a very high quality playback system, the delivery format's recording was a shadow of its former self. Albert Porter’s observations about CD recordings undergoing this process of diminishment as a matter of routine procedure highlights the many respects in which the recordings available to consumers deviate dramatically from their master recordings, to say nothing of how the master recordings themselves deviate from the recorded events. Taken together, both deviations create a gulf between the live event and its consumer playback, a gulf that some audiophiles try to fill with ADDITIVE measures. And that brings me back to the point of this post...

It now seems to me that the use of ADDITIVE measures can be a means of filling, to whatever extent possible, the gulf between the live event and the (in many cases) extremely diminished recordings available to consumers. IMO, that provides a plausible rationale for sacrificing a small measure of Recording Accuracy for the sake of potentially greater Event Accuracy. Put another way, it provides a rationale for the ADDITIVE approach to playback.

Just which types of additions are the right ones is another matter entirely.

Bryon
02-08-11: Mrtennis
it would facilitate communication if there were "standard" definitions for terms frquently used in discussion so that each of us would not have to qualify or explain the denotation or connotation of terms used in a sentence...

this is especially the case when some one asks for advice regarding an aspect of sound, such as "bright" and the posters would understand to a large extent, what was meant by the term.

I agree with you, Mrtennis, and I think you've identified another term that is often in need of clarification, namely 'bright.' Some people use it exclusively to refer to frequency response, but other people seem to use it more loosely to include anything they don't like about high frequencies, like shrillness, grain, glare, etch, etc..

Of course, all of these terms are imperfect descriptors of what is actually heard. But the subtle differences among them are often significant, as they can suggest different diagnoses of the problem, and therefore different remedies.

FWIW, what I find particularly valuable is any effort to correlate subjective terms like 'warm' or 'bright' with the objective characteristics to which those terms could refer, which was part of my motivation for beginning this thread. Correlating subjective descriptions with objective characteristics not only might help facilitate communication among audiophiles, but it might also contribute to our understanding of why some systems sound more like real music than others.

Bryon