How do you get speakers to sound warm in the midrange.

It may be distortion, colour call it whatever but warmth in the midrange seems to make a speaker sound more enjoyable to me. More organic richer true to life vocals. Is there a way to get this by adjusting the speaker a certain way or do you think it is just down to the driver itself or a sum of all the parts?

I know digital doesn't help as it can make things sound overly clinical at times but anyone know any warmth tricks?
 
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Wider dispersion (180 degrees to omni).
Truncate HF response, and also LF to maintain tonal balance (think Bose or typical 3" driver line arrays).
Let multiple drivers cover same bandwidth (related principle to dispersion)
Let time and phase alignment loosen up.

Basically anything that fuzzes up the sound...makes all important mid-range stand out, and warmly.

I'd add go analog source, tubes, and passive xovers, etc...but I'll get stoned to death if i do Lol :yikes:
 
Excess output in the midrange (say 500Hz to 4kHz) can sound tinny and cause hearing fatigue, especially on vocals.

Bring back bass, middle and treble controls, says an old duffer like me! 😉
 
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Is there a way to get this by adjusting the speaker a certain way or do you think it is just down to the driver itself or a sum of all the parts?

The lack of mid bass (floor bounce etc. generally gives a seeming suckout in the midrange due to the midrange being exposed and therefore harsher.) is usually the problem. Speakers that operate well between 80 and about 400Hz in room sound warm. It is not the midrange usually. However, it is normal to have a big suckout between 100Hz and 350Hz surprisingly for floors-standers and stand mount alike.

Try a carpet between the speakers(between you and the speakers) and adjust the speaker room placement to see if they get more midbass(it will seem more like live music and less like trebly low bass(smiley face response).

Another flaw that causes difficulty(and great pain for me) is distortion in the low treble which makes the midrange harsh.

Richard
 
I think warmth has to do more with a balance of bass/mid bass and treble. More bass and mid bass from below 350Hz. If you have a program like Jriver or other audio player with DSP/EQ: try a low-shelf filter of +5dB at 350Hz and Q of about 0.5. Listen with headphones with it enabled and not enabled and see if it adds "warmth". Having an amp with dominant 2nd order harmonic distortion vs 3rd is also beneficial to the warmth - hence why some prefer SET or SE Class A amps.

Speakers like a Karlsonator will attenuate highs above 400Hz - and they do indeed sound warm, which is one reason they are popular.

The Harman tilt (-5dB slope from bass to treble) is sort of warm but people prefer it to a flat response. Warmth also sounds more natural to some people.
 
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Pity the original poster lives on the right side of the Atlantic. I have extra pairs of the recommended Bose 901's available for cheap. 🙂 In a similar vein, many people would call these "warm" speakers but open air burns are illegal where I live, although summers in Florida are wet enough that even igniting Thermite might pose a challenge.
 
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Basically - equal loudness curve. I find a huge variation in mastering approaches, such that my speakers sound way too harsh on some tracks but perfect on most others.

I find the 2,500 - 4,000 range the most problematic. In my case I believe it is the tweeter contributing too much directional energy making things bright. I've engineered a 3dB dip in this area, which I further attenuate where required via auto selected digital EQ. I can therefore dial the forwardness desired.

I am dealing with metal drivers.. Some would say their breakup or directivity maybe causing the issue, but I have muted drivers in turn, and find the tweeter is what is causing the issue. I found this consistently across different XO points from 1,700 to 2700Hz. At the upper end, the metal mid was definitely introducing distortion artefacts colouring the sound, but not making it as harsh the tweeter.
 
A band only 700Hz wide? Seems unlikely.

Well maybe a little lower at the bottom end, but it is an octave.
Maybe you are right, I have an excess between 100 and 800 and the result is a stifling vocal closeness, a bit like mic proximity effects; not what I would think of as warmth, my chosen band was an estimation.

Actually there are several general points here, I don't really know what "warmth" is, but it has to be frequencies below the presence range.

On thing is clear after all these years, correlating a subjective impression of sound with objectively measured performance is really difficult, unless perhaps much time is devoted to training the ears with a graphic equaliser.
 
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Pity the original poster lives on the right side of the Atlantic. I have extra pairs of the recommended Bose 901's available for cheap. 🙂 In a similar vein, many people would call these "warm" speakers but open air burns are illegal where I live, although summers in Florida are wet enough that even igniting Thermite might pose a challenge.

I cannot equate warm with Bose 901s. I last heard them at a bodybuilding show in '85, at Lewisham Town Hall, and many were squinting at the screeching sound on Supremes singer on "I Want Muscle"
 
It may be distortion, colour call it whatever but warmth in the midrange seems to make a speaker sound more enjoyable to me. More organic richer true to life vocals. Is there a way to get this by adjusting the speaker a certain way or do you think it is just down to the driver itself or a sum of all the parts?

I know digital doesn't help as it can make things sound overly clinical at times but anyone know any warmth tricks?

When you say "adjusting the speaker" which adjustments do you make? That can vary from adding a coating on the speaker itself to using DSP. Warm is a fuzzy term in that what I consider warm you may consider clinical.

Because you say you know what makes it more enjoyable to you there are already some things discovered?
 
Wow some great responses so far, I'm catching up slowly. Its always puzzled me this one how some speakers can take on this organic like quality then others sound like electrical noise in a plastic milk carton. As has been mentioned some speakers do just sound harsh particularly with digital sources as analogue does take some of the sting out of it. Which was why a lot of old gear used to just sound nice. The other side of that many years ago you'd have things that just sounded too laid back, mushy and lush with very little clarity.

One speaker which seems to have stood the test of time is the LS3/5A which just hit a sweet spot of all that mentioned above even if they had no deep bass as such. And it does have a slight tendency to have some bloom to the midrange which can give it that real organic warmth that many crave after. This was done with the bump of the lower frequencies I think or perhaps someone can explain better why it had that quality.

The thing is getting a loudspeaker to sound more natural and have that organic feel has to be down to science as there is no organic material in it. OK the wood, paper if it has these components in its make up were all organic once but they are dead now, there's no living organic material then like vocal chords etc.

Its always made me wonder why some speakers do it well and others fail miserably. Having a smiley face EQ on it can tame things from it being overbearing but not always bring that warm quality if it's missing in the first place.
 
- Which was why a lot of old gear used to just sound nice.

I guess you're talking about limited high frequency response. Wider response, more accurate, less warm, in general. I agree with the other guys, it's mostly about frequency response, plus low/mid frequency distortion. Match your speakers' frequency response at your listing position, and compare them. You'll find they are surprising similar, while warmer sounding one should be less detailed due to distortion or some other non linear factors.
 
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@ westsounds, I agree with you that it can come down to removing what shouldn't be there and restoring what should be there. That is a journey in itself.

There are many anecdotal broad fixes, such as carefully applied distortion. Some speakers are too far from right and need something drastic to overcome, but otherwise these don't work.

I once thought I'd found a solution because I'd built an amp that had a distortion characteristic that changed with level at just the right rate. More likely I'd found a complement to the non-linear perception of the harshness of diffraction or something along those lines. Some things can make you cringe when the level changes.
 
@ westsounds, I agree with you that it can come down to removing what shouldn't be there and restoring what should be there. That is a journey in itself.

There are many anecdotal broad fixes, such as carefully applied distortion. Some speakers are too far from right and need something drastic to overcome, but otherwise these don't work.

I once thought I'd found a solution because I'd built an amp that had a distortion characteristic that changed with level at just the right rate. More likely I'd found a complement to the non-linear perception of the harshness of diffraction or something along those lines. Some things can make you cringe when the level changes.


Yes another great response. You can completely cover the response range in its entirety and measure perfectly but depending on the source and even down to the material used in the loudspeaker like paper cones or metal cones, the overall presentation will sound different. Paper cones have a duller sound than metal for instance. Wood will sound different from plastic enclosures. As I said earlier there is no living organic material like vocal chords in a speakers so getting it to sound the same is close to impossible, unless we create a mutant living loudspeaker here on DIY audio somehow 🙂

But as has been said adding things like tubes into the signal chain can add harmonics which are pleasing to the ear, maybe not as pleasing as real live experience but if anything sounds more pleasant it can't be a bad thing.
 
That's a lot of answers.

I personally find that drivers with very low levels of distortion sound very warm and correct in the midrange. Also the balance between the drivers needs to be spot on, and as Allen said the power response needs to be even and controlled.

There's other stuff in the electronics that can make a system sound like a trash can full of cats, but that's not this thread.

Play a f’’ (or F5) on a piano. Does that sound warm to you?

It's a good point, but music is usually not just one note at a time, even for the piano. Even a piano solo will have chords, most of the time anyway. Also the original sound is lost at the very instant it is recorded, meaning the comparison isn't fair. Most engineers will try and get a faithful accurate and natural sound, but also try to balance out multiple instruments.