According to Benchmark Technical Director John Siau Benchmark was designed purposely not to sound warm but neutral instead. Warm sound works wonderful with voices or guitar but not so great with instruments that have more complex harmonic structure like piano or percussion instruments. Overly warm gear can, according to John Siau, make piano sound like out of tune. Benchmark is very smooth and resolving. Because of that it can reveal deficiencies in the system. It revealed bright sounding aluminum dome tweeters in my previous speakers but sound wonderful with my current speakers that have well implemented soft dome tweeters.