What does "Dark Background " mean TT terminology

If I would take the statment "Emotionally envolving" literally, I have to say definitely. There were a couple of times where I played tracks that actually made my eyes water. It was so intense that it really hits your soul. Reminds me of the the movie Philadelphia when Tom Hanks played that classical piece in his apartment and he was so in to it.

Markphd

The description from "page 69 Aug,1993" makes a lot of sense. I guess I have to take it soemwhat in two ways.

First: Dark = Very rich quality-As in Dark Chocolate, Dark coffee etc.

Second: Dark = Very quiet-As in Dark winter night, Pitch- black, Dead quiet.

Now, let me talk to some of my buddies and impress them with my audiophile lingo.

Justubes, there are in fact two different issues here, but my understanding is that "dark," what you call "first dark" refers to something's tonal attributes, as in: The current Levinson amps have a dark sound.

The other issue, noise floor, or background noise, what you call "second dark" I've always heard referred to as "black" or "black background", never "dark." As in: The sound emerged from a totally black background. I've never heard the term "dark" used in this context.

In the first case, a range or degree is implied (dark, darker, very dark ;--)

The second case implies an absolute -- absolute silence. The sound never emerges from a "dark gray" background ;--)
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You can also just invent your own terminology. It will be as useful as the terms many of the reviewers employ. Is your system too yang? Does it lean toward the whiter side of orange. Is there a self-effacing restraint in the upper registers as if the contrast was just slightly too sudden on light jazz at lower SPL? Have you found that Madonna displays a bit too much cleavage when entering contralto range?
See it's really quite easy. The real task lies in getting hired so that you can be paid to jibberize.

I think Johnnantais nailed it pretty good. I'm also not suprised that earlier audiophile definitions don't address this. It seems to me that the issue of noisefloors in systems is a more recent area of attention: for a long time, the issues were around tonality, range, dynamics, imaging and other attributes of the sound the system was making, as opposed to the background 'noise' that wasn't supposed to be heard. Not so much hum, or rumble, or even the level of ambient 'noise' the system is producing while on, when no program is playing.
Instead, as I think Johnnantais suggests, it is the difference between the music on the one hand, and utter silence on the other- the more of the latter, the more the music is going to emerge from an environment that is uncolored and contrasts starkly with the sound of the instruments. If the system has a 'sound' in place of this silence, there is not as much contrast between the music and the silence- so the small details are obscured; in addition,
the 'sound' of the system will also be present when notes are playing and color the music in the same way. So, to me, a dark background means dead quiet in the silences, and also speaks to the lack of a coloration being imposed on the music itself.
It may be that with quieter sources- CD perhaps, for the lack of surface noise, and improvements in electronics, as well as AC, we are hearing more artifacts of the equipment itself- not just what the equipment is designed to sound like, ie, its obvious colorations that are as much revealed in the silences between notes as the sounds of the notes themselves. The attention paid to this also seems to coincide with all the consideration now given to isolation stands, AC conditioning and the like.