What is “warmth” and how do you get it?

Once again, more proof of the need for a better audiophile vocabulary; one which, if it is to have any real meaning, needs concensus. A good place to start is, ironically, outside the audiophile world; in real world vocabulary. How often do we say something like :"Joe Toob is a warm person", or "John Fett is not a very warm person, he is cold". When we say these things, are we referring to anything having to do do with frequency response? Probably not. We are probably referring to wether a person is amiable or not. I think the term warm, in the audio context, is being misused, and has more to do with a components ability to draw you in, and let you get involved with the music. Frequency response certainly plays a role, but I think more impotant in determinng a component's "amiability" is the texture of the sound it makes. This can be independent of perceived brightness, or darkness. I have heard components that sound way too dark, and thick through the midrange, but are also very dry sounding. Conversely, I have heard some that I would consider way too bright sounding, but are also very liquid sounding. Texture. Micro dynamics ability is the other key factor. That is where a component's ability to convey a performer's expressive qualities lies; the warmth of the performance.

Music that approaches the sound of a live performance is, by defintion, warm. The sound of live music runs the gamut as far as wether it sounds shrill, bright, dark, etc. It is the human element that makes it warm, or not. What gives music that hard to describe texture, and dimensionality is the human body attached to it.

Consensus in audio ???

You're right. What was I thinking?!?

hi almrag:

so, you are saying that a tube amp would have a ddifferent freequency response than a ss amp, when driving an electrostatic speaker.

would you expect the difference to be as much as 5 db difference at frequencies exceeding 3 db, or what difference in spl would you expect and at what frequencies ?

how might the frequency response change if the amp was a hybrid (tube input stage), such as the aria amp, designed by mike elliot ?

i have quad esls and am considering the aria wt 100. it has a tube front end and bi polar transistors.

Hi Bryon and Al - Al, you interpreted my comments exactly right, and clarified/elaborated them nicely with your discussion of hall ambience. Bryon, I am not so sure, though, that it has as much to do with distance from the performers in the hall, other than to state that to be too close is not ideal, as the sound will definitely be brighter. And sound does generally travel up and back in a good hall, so that the "nosebleed" seats in many halls are actually the best ones. However, the latter is not always true, often mezzanine seats, or seats in the middle to the back of the floor are best (as long as they are not under an overhang, then they are definitely the worst).

As to the question of whether or not something recorded in a studio can be "warm," that is a much more interesting issue. The studio itself is of course a very cold, dead space. I would say that the vast majority of the time, studio recordings that sound "warm" have been altered with digital reverb, etc. - studios are the playgrounds of the engineer, for sure. And while Al may be right that close miking can result in some good studio recordings of certain instruments, this is IME not usually the case - normally close-miked recordings of acoustic instruments do not sound very good, if by good we mean "real." This, to me, is sort of equivalent of sitting too close in a concert hall. I guarantee you that whenever an engineer puts a mike too close to an instrument, the player tries to move it as far away as he can get away with.