wind016 writes:
You know the K701s don't sound warm is because they have an extremely over emphasized lower treble and upper mids. They are colored in that fashion.
But the real world doesn't sound warm
You seem to think we live in a perpetual warm sonic environment. So replay equipment is always to sound warm and if it doesn't it is at fault.
This is why I'm saying that it is odd when people complain that audio equipment is "lacking warmth". As if warmth were some necessary inclusion.
I'm not claiming the K 701/2s have a flat frequency response but over-emphasised lower treble and upper mids aren't going to have a cooling effect.
The "warmth" effect comes primarily from even-order harmonic distortion.
I love going to hear music played live. I am very lucky in that I live with great access to a truly wonderful music hall. In fact I chose the house I now live in partially on the basis that it is so easy for me to get to the hall from my house.
This is the Royal Festival Hall in London. In about 2000 it had a massive sonic make-over such that it is now possibly the finest acoustic environment in the world, certainly amongst the finest if not the finest.
People who bizarrely believe that music is alway served warm might get quite a shock if they go to the Royal Festival Hall and listen to some good music played there.
Those naughty musicians in the orchestra don't alway play in warm tones. It is a shocker, I know, maybe they should be reprimanded?
The brass section can play those high notes so sharply! They don't seem to realise that they should be producing a kind of warm fuzz type of a sound.
For those who wish to be offended by the sound of music and how it often isn't warm I suggest to you the Royal Festival Hall and a good performance perhaps of one of the many masterpieces from the classical repertoire.
Royal Festival Hall.
I think that the people who want all this warmth applied don't realise that they are missing out on something, and that something is the marvellous ways in which good musicians can play in a way that is warm, or cold or with many other temperatures in between. Ironically the soup of the applied warmth in their audio equipment will mean they never hear the warmth when it is played by the musicians.
It is hard for me to think of a music genre that doesn't make use of the idea of temperature in sound, even though it is an inherently abstract connection it is one that we relate to.
Terrific jazz musicians can play continuously with this idea of warm and cold.
Today I listen mostly to classical music and here as with jazz and other forms the idea of temperature is often used within the overall sonic structure. In fact with impressionism, the music I listen to the most, there is often very sophisticated sonic sculpture, if you like, using all of the available sonic tones, textures, timbres and temperatures. (I've just hit on a piece of alliteration).
It is unfortunate that today people are spending sometimes quite a lot of money on audio equipment that has not a hope in hell (warm place) of showing them this aspect of this marvellous music.