Need definitions of: Dark; Warm; and Bright


Throughout thousands of postings, the descriptive adjectives of dark, warm, and bright are employed.  What does each of them actually mean?  Are these meanings solely subjective, or can they be seen in displays of frequency responses and distortion across an audio spectrum?
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Showing 2 responses by mijostyn

A lot of none answers.

Warm refers to too much mid bass or a peak in the 100 to 250 hz region.

Dark refers to a trough in the 2000 to 3000 hz region

Bright is a rising response from 3000 Hz and above. Dull is a falling response from 3000 hz or anywhere from above.

My personal preference is for bass rising from 125 Hz down up 3 dB at 20 Hz and a falling response from 4000 hz down 6 dB at 20 kHz. This is at a 95 dB playback volume. The "right" frequency balance changes with volume. 

The tonality of a speaker system is based purely on it's frequency response. Things like enclosure resonances will show up as blips in the frequency response curve. Imaging is much more complicated depending on multiple factors. Then there is transient response and ringing. Tonality, however is totally "adjustable."  With many room control programs (a misnomer as it is really speaker control) you can program target curves to adjust tonality any old which way. Once you have programmed several hundred different curves you learn what doing this and that, here and there does to the sound. This is a great exercise for an audiophile.

@hide45, Robert Hartley? You pick strange people to be your gods.

There are people more qualified to comment on audio matters than an english major. 

As for my answer, it certainly qualifies as more of an answer than what came before it and it was very specific. If you had a bit more knowledge and some decent equipment you could make yourself qualified to make statements on those assertions, maybe your definition of bright is different than mine. Anyone here with the capability can make these frequency adjustments and see if they agree. Maybe they will not and we can talk about it and perhaps come up with better definitions. But you? Just hot air I'm afraid.