So, is it Clarity or Brightness?

I've recently made some changes in the system that have increased clarity immensely. I'm hearing things on recordings that were never there before. This is quite a pleasure and revelation.

This increased clarity may be somewhat at the expense of the sense of warmth that I would like to achieve. Is it possible to have incredible clarity while still retaining some of the smoothness? When does clarity cross the line to brightness? If the system is well balanced in all frequency areas, can it still have gaps?

If the recipe, ingredients and technique are high quality, how could the soup turn out less than stellar?

RW