Need definitions of: Dark; Warm; and Bright

The descriptive term 'Dark' has the most confusions and different meanings.

Dark is when there is a an overly soft treble that causes no life to the very upper treble.

That's how I understand it. But some reviewers (not from established magazines, but online) seem to think 'Dark' means the sound comes from an overly black background.

Without words, we’re dumb brutes.

Yes, precisely.
I believe all thoughts are made in language, even if we have to invent words and meanings.

Audiophile terms, recognising them, identifying them and correctly understanding their meanings are possibly the greatest hope to convey what we are hearing to another.

Critical listening, comparing, I believe are a learned behavior. Just like almost anything where experience allows someone to differentiate, breed, qualities, or performance.

The fundamental issue in this conversation seems to be "which words can be used to describe audio experiences accurately that other people can also learn?"

It would be completely right if sounds and music experience would overlap completely but they are not...The vocabularey of sound in audio thread is not identical with  the vocabulary of music and acoustic... Then you are right we must have common words to communicate.... But some experience cannot be described by some of the words we use in audio more often... Like "bright" or "warm"....

Then the vocabulary for sounds in audio threads come from electrical design particular tasks and marketing and not from experienced musicians or musical field...

Then appreciation of a system through some kind of music differ anyway much from another kind of music particular requirements...Classical brain dont judge like rock brain....

For example "warm and bright" comes from the electronical condition particular design of the gear links but timbre interpretation and description come from some core non amplified instrumental and vocal music experience...

Psycho acoustic dont use much the audiophile "warm and bright" expression at his core .... Audio thread do....

These concepts made sense ONLY for describing our relation to sounds in a very particular way.... when our system BEGINS to be rightfully embedded in his working mechanical, electrical and acoustical dimensions these words make less and less sense, or we dont need them at all no more.... Even when the fine tuning of a system only begins they lost their importance when comes the times to describe the system translation of sounds into musical perception...

People use them 2brighter or warmer" in relation with a non tuned system out of the box in comparison with their past experience of another system or piece of gear.... For example these speakers or dac or amplifier are warmer than my last one....

But musical acoustical tuning cannot make them very useful more than in a very general almost useless way....

"Timbre", the crux concept of musical perception, is not, ONLY and MAINLY, a bunch of frequencies for the human ears.... Acoustical controls and is more important for example than the design of an amplifier most of the times , save if the design is very bad....And the vocabulary of acoustic cannot be circled with "warm and bright" concepts...

Some acoustical concepts like " imaging", "soundstage", "listener envelopment", "source width" etc keep their meaning more supported in a string of experiments....For example that make no sense at all for me now to describe my audio system with bright and/or warm words, even if i want to describe my taste... I will more easily say that piano timbre is natural the sound distributed out of the speakers distinctly and in a room filling soundstage where i feel sometimes included in the recording theater....Bright? Warm? yes when my acoustical settings are out of tune if i eliminate them the result will be one of these 2 catastophes in loosing the natural "timbre" sound of each instrument...

My best to you and all...

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. [2] And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. ... [5] And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Okay. Forget for the moment this is anything to do with religion. Consider only the sequence of events: formless void and darkness becomes night and day. How? By being called night and day. 

Take away words and all we have left is formless void. Audio terms like dark, warm and bright are tools we use to evaluate performance, find better components, and build a better system. Without them we are adrift in a formless void. Think about it. 

Then you are right we must have common words to communicate.... But some experience cannot be described by some of the words we use in audio more often... Like "bright" or "warm"....

The human ear/brain system converts all forms of distortion into tonality.

'Warm' has come to mean when a 2nd or 3rd harmonic is present, in enough quantity to mask higher ordered harmonic distortion.


'Bright' can be actual tilted high frequencies (possibly simply caused by a lack of bass) or it can also be caused by the unmasked presence of higher ordered harmonic distortion, which is interpreted by the ear as brightness (and also harshness).


Audiophiles have been using these terms with these meanings for decades FWIW.