@skyscraper
The concept of warmth is lost on me. I’ve been many live performances
and concerts and none of them had any sound I’d describe or understand
as being warm, so I don’t understand what that means in terms of sound
reproduction.
That's fascinating.
For me, "warmth" is one of the central characteristics of live acoustic instruments and voices. It's what is generally lacking in reproduced sound.
I'll try to explain what I mean.
For me there sort of two notions of warmth. There's a richness in terms of a filled out, round tone, vs a thin, squeezed, hard tone. And there is warmth in the sense of timbre. Woody resonances sound 'warm.' The resonating body of my acoustic guitar is "warm." One of the things that a speaker has to do is make materials sound like the materials they are, so wood sounds like wood, not like some electronic or plastic recreation.
Human voices are "warm" because they are come from human flesh vs plastic or metal. But in many sound systems, singers sound to me as if made of non-human timbre - there is an electronic, artificial timbre, not "real human flesh and blood warmth."
There's also warmth in terms of harmonic complexity.
I was streaming an internet radio station devoted to acoustic guitar pieces through my iMac 5K computer yesterday. The iMac speakers are suprisingly decent given what the design enforces on them. But though one could identify all the types of guitars being played - acoustic steel string there, classical here, 12 string there - none actually sounded as guitar sound timbrally. All were blanched of tonal character, stripped of complexity, like little plastic toy guitars.
I picked up my own acoustic guitar and played along. The difference in sonic richness was really something. A single string played in my real guitar sound richer and more complex than an entire guitar through my iMac speakers. Even a steel string had a feeling of "warmth" compared to the crappy reproduction, insofar as it sounded of such a rainbow of tone, so round. When I play my real guitar, my mind sees warm colors of wood, golden string harmonics mixed with silver. Most guitar recordings played through speaker systems sound detailed, but tonally grayed out. (As was the case when I listened to some super transparent, pricey speakers at a pal's place recently).
So "warmth" to me is that organic, real richness, harmonic complexity - the real person vs robot thing.
Finally, going back to the first version of warmth: the size of the sound.I find a common aspect of reproduced sound to be a diminution of the richness and size of an instrument. Everything sounds squeezed, stripped, compressed. If you hear a real sax played in front of you, or trombone or trumpet, it stunning how the sound is so BIG and blooms and fills the room. By comparison, most recorded instruments sound like you are watching them from the event horizon of a black hole, as they are being squeezed tiny. A single acoustic guitar string pluck, a single bowed string on a violin or cello, is so much thicker, has so much more body and roundness, than in most reproduced sound.
And that's a sense of warmth that I like as well. (Warmth being in that case a sense of feeling the sound, of the instrument moving air).
So some rare speakers for me manage to convey the sparkling harmonics and woody body of an acoustic guitar similar to what I hear in real life. Some portray a particularly rich, physical sense of body (e.g. Devore "O" series speakers being a nice example).
Given warmth is such a feature of real sound to me, it's something I've strived for my system to display, or impart. I have some Thiel 2.7 speakers (if anyone things all Thiels are bright, or thin, these would dispel that in a moment), and I've used Conrad Johnson Premier 12 tube amps for decades, as they impart an organic richness and roundness to the speakers. And of course paying attention to speaker positioning and room acoustics has helped me avoid artifacts I find artificial, and dial in that timbral warmth.
When I was at my friend's house listening to some super clear and detailed speakers he has at the moment (will leave them unnamed for now), I was unmoved as NOTHING sounded organic and warm. I'd compare the sound of the vocalist on the recording to the real voices of people speaking in the room, and the difference was stark: even 'natural jazz vocal recordings' sounded electronic, processed, steely around the edges, hard, made of the wrong stuff, compared to the wet, damped, fleshy timbre of real speaking voices.
But...at home when I replayed some of the same vocal tracks, as well as some of the same trumpet, sax pieces, THERE was that organic warmth I was missing at my friend's place! Big, rich, round, not hard, with the right tonal color, not dark, not bright...just naturally warm. I compared it to my wife's voice as she spoke and, unlike the other system, the sound from the speakers was beautifully continuous with the sound of a real voice. It sounded warm and organic. It was tremendously satisfying.
Sorry for blabbing on, but this whole "warmth" and "tone" thing is something I'm a bit obsessed with, so there ya go.
BTW, as I must have mentioned, I auditioned the Magico A3s.At least in my audition, they didn't quite do that warmth thing I crave.Though they were stupendous in many respects - that clarity and resolution, without brightness, and a super sophistication in rendering the distinctive details between instruments. I wondered what I'd think of them if I put them on my CJ amps, and tweaked them at home.
