contradictory communication

if the definition of warm were changed to mean correctness of timbre, e.g., listening to an acoustic guitar, one hears the nylon character of the string and the wood body, there would be no need to use the word transparent or any other word.

i think the problem lies in the use of audio terms which are not terms used to describe music.

i personally prefer a description to an adjective.

one could say an absence of bass or lower midrange, using an instrument as a reference instead of lean.

sometimes when using 2 adjectives, the result is ambiguous.

as a reviewer, i try not to be aware of conotations of words so i do not confuse my readers.

anyone who is interested can go to audiophilia.com and read a review or a feature article. you will need to search the archives for feature articles and some of my reviews.

i welcome any comments that would be helpful to me in the future.

my name is roy harris. my email address is: rouyash04@yahoo.com .

thanks.

We tend to use analogies from the other senses to describe the sound of audio systems. They are imprecise, but are generally more meaningful and useful to me than other approaches I have seen, except for those few reviewers who are able to communicate the overall character of a component, for which they also invoke analogies: red wine vs. white wine, Carnegie Hall, yin and yang. These are the most useful for me. This is a personal thing, however. No one approach will work for everyone.

Let's see, was Mrtennis using green power bait or nightcrawlers?

MrTennis - Unfortunately, the term 'warm' to describe playback is inconsitent among audiophiles. To you, clearly it means "loss of detail in the treble region."

To BigTee, 'warm' means midrange body, and may be irrelevent to the upper register.

To me, it may mean something else.

I think a point of confusion is that you can have two different playbacks, both measuring ruler flat, and one can sound "warmer" than the other. This is because there are many other attributes of audio that play a role in what we hear other than the freq. response.

Take 2 speaker drivers, one made out of aluminum, the other paper, and the third plastic composite. They all measure ruler flat, but they will all have different sonic characters, perceived "warmth" being one of them.

Since what you hear is a combination of factors I would suggest that you cannot totally separate anything.....warm and transparency are different as Onhwy61 correctly points out but my guess is they are also related in the way the overall sound is perceived.

The relative balance between 1K and 8K frequency response can produce warmth.....basically a peak at 4K will sound more sound harsh (brighter brass) and a dip at around 4 K will sound warmer (less harsh).

However, there is another dimension to warm sound; more harmonics from some equipment like tube amps create more warmth to the sound by increasing the harmonic content....vinyl does much the same when compared to digital. Since harmonics are entirely natural to sound and crucial to the way you percieve them and the timbre...these added harmonics are often pleasing.

I guess I am suggesting that it is very hard to separate terms in audio as everything is interelated.