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

Mapman, FWIW, I agree with your first two sentences. I think tonal differences in speakers can easily be effected by enclosure design, speaker selection, and crossover design.

Except for those speakers which have been intentionally designed to use its natural resonance frequencies to enhance a tone, the speakers 'harmonics' would not greatly affect its frequency response so much as its resolution.

For example, if the cabinet had an unsuppressed resonance frequency of, say 350hz, it would likely sound muddy/boomy, not natural at all, and something I think a designer would want to avoid like the plague.

In the context of this thread I think 'harmonics' is a term referring to the overall tone of an instrument and how it is replicated in the recording or playback process, something that it best appreciated with the choice of a violin, guitar, piano, etc, which all have sound boards which resonate and create complex sounds (harmonics) resulting in a natural tone. Not a warm tone, not a cool tone, a natural tone, the signature of the instrument itself, and not the recording or playback process. That tone is what it is. That is what I think when I use the term 'natural'.

Personally I'm not comfortable in referring to speaker designed tone, hall acoustics, or home room acoustics as 'harmonics' in the same sense as those of instruments.

hi newbee:

i think you have described the concept of warm, in your first paragraph in a previous post.

however, would you say that a dip in the highs and a peak in the upper bass and/or lower mids, is amore specific description of warmth ?

if so, warmth is a coloration--an audible deviation from a flat frequency response.

a basic issue is whether warmth is a coloration.

as 9i have said, when listening to musicians playing instruments which are unaplified, does the word warmth apply ?

i think not, i suspect that what people mean by warmth is accuracy of timbre. when an instrument does not sound real, there usually are errors in frequency response.

it would be interesting to find out rrobert harley's definition from his famous book (i don't remember the title).

the easiest way to achieve warmth , other than room treatment is equalization, but there is a cost to using this approach. i had suggested a deqx or tact in a previous post, these devices operate in the digital domain.

Hi Mr T,

As I have said in a post previous to the one you have quoted, my only hope when I listen to recorded music is to hear something that sounds natural, consonant with that which I would experience live. My live experiences leave me with little choice when selecting components for my home system but to tune a system which might be called warmish, especially in the upper bass/lower mid's and a little dip between 2 and 3K hz. I do not seek a reduction in the high frequencies. To me my choices only compensate for the prevailing design critera used by so many speaker and electronic's manufacturers, as well as more than a few recording engineers that better serve the stereo format and goals than the music itself. Just think how music could be better served if soundstage was no longer an issue. In stereo the engineers rely on multi-mic'ing to create the stereo effect and the sound of a live event is lost.

For example, most live music, except for very close seating is mono in form which is amplified by the horn shape of the stage and enlarged by the hall acoustics. If you can ever find one, try a properly set up binaural recording and see how much the stereo soundstage collapses into a large, well defined, mono sound field.

FWIW, just my POV. But I don't think I can help you with your conclusions.

Call that sound colored if you will but to me it has the potential to occasionally remind me of something I heard live, and at worst covers a lot of 'uncolored' sin perpetrated in the name of 'audio'.

02-16-11: Newbee
Tubes. If you have speakers appropriate to your room and to tubes in the first place, and these speakers have a reasonably good sense of 'natural' resolution, by using tube equipment and carefully using (rolling) tubes therein to get you to your sonic goals, you can tame common HF problems and even add some bass /lower mid range boost (that warmth you are looking for?).

I think this is good advice, Newbee. I just listened to some tube amps tonight - a Jadis and a VTL. One warm, the other less so. The warm one portrayed instrument timbres beautifully, but unfortunately it was dynamically challenged, to put it politely. I will continue to listen to tube amps...I am really a novice here.

02-16-11: Mapman
Many feel some speakers are "warmer" sounding than others...
I'm wondering do different speaker designs handle harmonics differently? that would seem to be the case if harmonics is the main factor in determining warmth.

I agree that some speakers sound warmer than others. I assumed that was a consequence of differences in frequency response, cabinet coloration, and/or high Q drivers. But you may be right that there are differences in the harmonic characteristics of speakers. If so, I wonder what determines a speaker's harmonic "signature"?

02-16-11: Mrtennis
it would be interesting to find out rrobert harley's definition from his famous book (i don't remember the title).

The term "warm" does not appear in the glossary of RH's Guide to High End Audio. It does appear in a section called "Sonic Descriptions and their Meanings." He does not explicitly define "warm," but he seems to use it to mean "harmonic accuracy." FWIW.

Bryon

Hi guys - I wrote a very long post last night, only to discover that I could not post it, for some reason. The discussion has meanwhile left me far behind, but it has been a very good one. Obviously, the main problem here is terminology. As Newbee politely pointed out, some of you seem to have a misconception of what "harmonics" or "overtones" are, and my attempts to define it were obviously unsuccessful. I refer you to any book on acoustics. Hifibri in particular has misconstrued what I have been saying about them, and I give up - there is a reason why I am a musician, and not a writer, LOL (Hifibri, if you want to email me through the audiogon system, I can try to explain to you why your guitar example is not quite correct). I am in agreement with what Al and Newbee have said about harmonics in general.

What I will say is that I think I do finally have a handle on why you all think that frequency response is a major part of warmth. The terminology was holding me back - partly some people's incorrect usage of it, but also and mainly the differences between the meaning of certain words when used in the context of a musician's performance as opposed to the attributes of an audio system's "performance." The only quibble I still have with this discussion is with the importance many of you are placing on minute changes of amplitude in overtones within a musician's timbre as being the major factor in a perception of "warmth." (I am NOT denying that this is a factor) Overtones are inaudible to 99.9% of us. Changes in their amplitude, therefore, would not be heard independently from changes in amplitude to the main frequency actually being sounded. Harmonics do of course have to do with the "warmth" of the timbre, but the musician has no control whatsoever over specific harmonics within the overall timbre. Nothing the player does can isolate a specific harmonic and change it's amplitude - all harmonics will be affected by anything happening to the main frequency being sounded. Let me give a couple of examples.

If I sound the same tone with the same amplitude on two different horns in the same room, the differing "warmth" of the instruments will have everything to do with the alloy of the metal used in constructing the instruments, as well as the difference in the way the horn is designed (not to mention the differences in execution of the same design). Assuming that a strobe tuner is present so we can be sure that the two tones are of exactly the same frequency, the harmonics will be exactly the same. And if the frequency is off by say a cent or two, the harmonics will be proportionally off as well, and this extremely slight difference would not be perceived by 99.9% of us, anyway. You would perceive perhaps a great difference in the "warmth" of the two horns, but it is not because of harmonics. Same if I play the exact same frequency and amplitude in two different rooms on the same horn. They WILL sound perceptibly different to everyone, but it is because of the acoustics of the room, not because of overtones. One more example - two different recordings made of one note in the same room (with a different mike placement for each, or very possibly with the same mike placement) will also sound different. One may sound "warmer" than another, but again not because of harmonics.

Bryon, you are definitely on the right track here: "some acoustical environments, whether a recording space or a listening space, can CONTRIBUTE to the perception of warmth, while other acoustical environments can DIMINISH the perception of warmth. The fact that most concert halls - being highly acoustically designed environments - contribute to the perception of warmth is something I do not take issue with. I was merely trying to point out that LESS WELL DESIGNED acoustical environments might diminish the perception of warmth. Two things seem to follow from that observation. First, for recordings that lack warmth, the acoustics of the recording space might be a factor. Second, for systems that lack warmth, the acoustics of the listening space might be a factor." Change the first word from "some" to "all," and change each use of the words "can" and "might" to "will". Despite all the best acousticians know, it is impossible to predict exactly what the hall is going to do to the overall sound. These factors and others mentioned in other posts (the audio equipment itself, in particular) have a great deal more to do with "warmth," IMO.