I agree with Hifiman. Your system has to have enough 'warmth' inorder to portray music naturally and realistically. I think it's a matter of degrees: too little warmth and the result will be overly sterile and analytical, too much warmth and you get a syrupy sound (which I define as slow with an emphasis in the upper bass/lower midrange). I think of it as a continuum:
analytical___________________________syrupywarm
The trick is to first determine generally where on this continuum your taste lies and then,secondly, to assemble your system components to match your tastes. Easier said then done, for sure. I would say most A'gon members' tastes lie between somewhere, where the warmth is, with very few at the extremes.
Looking back on my system evolution, I clearly moved from an original analytical system to a current system that is much warmer without consciously thinking in these terms. But I can remember that I was looking for more realism and that illusion of 'you are there'. I know now that I was wanting more 'warmth',depth and presemce.
But your question was about how do you get more warmth. There was another recent thread about 'bloom' that you may want to read. I think the 2 concepts are closely related. In my limited experience, I would suggest tubed equipment needs to exist somewhere in your audio chain (source, preamp,amp) to obtain good, natural warmth and bloom. I don't deny you can achieve some warmth and bloom with solid state equipment but you'll need to select carefully and have deep pockets to be successful. Speaking of which, your system is very nice and I don't see any obvious cause of a lack of warmth. I don't think your Focal spkrs or Pass amp are responsible. I am definitely no expert but that won't stop me from making one suggestion: experiment. You could try out a few tubed preamps to see if this gives you the desired warmth(hopefully, there are some local dealers that will accomodate this). This worked for me. I'm not familiar with your preamp/processor or the mods but know you've made a big investment in it. But even if you substituted a different preamp, you could still utilize your current preamp as a prossessor if the new preamp has a HT passthru. Not sure if I helped but wish you good luck on your search.
analytical___________________________syrupywarm
The trick is to first determine generally where on this continuum your taste lies and then,secondly, to assemble your system components to match your tastes. Easier said then done, for sure. I would say most A'gon members' tastes lie between somewhere, where the warmth is, with very few at the extremes.
Looking back on my system evolution, I clearly moved from an original analytical system to a current system that is much warmer without consciously thinking in these terms. But I can remember that I was looking for more realism and that illusion of 'you are there'. I know now that I was wanting more 'warmth',depth and presemce.
But your question was about how do you get more warmth. There was another recent thread about 'bloom' that you may want to read. I think the 2 concepts are closely related. In my limited experience, I would suggest tubed equipment needs to exist somewhere in your audio chain (source, preamp,amp) to obtain good, natural warmth and bloom. I don't deny you can achieve some warmth and bloom with solid state equipment but you'll need to select carefully and have deep pockets to be successful. Speaking of which, your system is very nice and I don't see any obvious cause of a lack of warmth. I don't think your Focal spkrs or Pass amp are responsible. I am definitely no expert but that won't stop me from making one suggestion: experiment. You could try out a few tubed preamps to see if this gives you the desired warmth(hopefully, there are some local dealers that will accomodate this). This worked for me. I'm not familiar with your preamp/processor or the mods but know you've made a big investment in it. But even if you substituted a different preamp, you could still utilize your current preamp as a prossessor if the new preamp has a HT passthru. Not sure if I helped but wish you good luck on your search.