As usual: Subjective descriptions in audio, like elsewhere in life, are imprecise by nature. But not therefore false, useless or "nonsense." Most of what we describe to one another about our experiences, be it the tastes in a great meal or a vacation or a concert experience, are going to be attempts to put real world phenomena in to subjective terms. It works for the most part.
Sound mixers will refer to frequency ranges, but very often they are using quick-and-dirty subjective terms among themselves, and just as important, with clients. As I've said before: if subjective terms were fully nonsense or useless, given this is the main way artists/clients etc communicate, little of the artistic content from movies to music could be produced.
Artists or clients don't have to learn audio measurements, nor even in subjective description terms, memorize all this :
Lost for the best words to describe music and sound? Download my audio glossary to give clear mix feedback notes to your mixing engineer.
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Often there are some natural terms and descriptions that tend to arise in describing sound. For instance, in my business, a very common descriptor is something like "
the production sound is thin." That can come from anyone from a director, producer, a mixer, a sound editor...whatever...and though it doesn't directly pinpoint any particular frequency range per se (because the problem can be different given the tracks) it DOES express something people can generally understand. We get what you are saying, generally understand the problem we are looking for, and can find the fix.
And since subjective terms can be used differently, you can just ask someone what they mean when using the term.
So for instance with the audio term: "warmth." It's used in various ways. One, often in mixing terms, it's a significant presence in around
the 100 - 200 Hz range or thereabouts, in terms of how that affects the sound of many voices and instruments. (Though it can be lower..or even higher...depending on the specific sound one is trying to "make more warm.")
If I take a decently recorded Johnny Cash track and put a frequency dip of 7dB around, say, 150Hz, it is likely to take the "warmth" or "fullness" out of his voice. Restoring or even boosting that frequency range (not too wide Q) will bring back the "warmth" in his voice. It will have more of the recognizable human throat/chesty resonance we are familiar with - reducing these ranges will make such a voice "thin sounding" in comparison.
An important point is this: You don't even necessarily require talk of frequency ranges to both observe and communicate this phenomenon.
If I said "Johnny Cash's voice sounds thin in X case but warm in Y case" and you asked "what do you mean by that?" I could simply play you the two different tracks (or a single track, as above, but with one EQ setting sucking out the warmth region, the other slightly boosting it).
"Hear that difference? That is what I mean by saying his voice sounds "warm." I could play several other tracks with the frequency boost and cuts showing how various instruments become thicker/warmer or thinner when cutting these frequencies.
But nobody has to know WHAT is causing the difference, with a specific knowledge of frequency response measurements, to note the difference and come up with subjective descriptions. Imprecise. But not useless. And lots of terms seemed to arise fairly naturally "Body," "Fullness," "Rich," "Warm" etc.
The term "warm" is also often used in the sense of timbral differences. It may be describing certain harmonic or distortion characteristics that seem to strike many people as "sounding warm" - e.g. tube amp distortion, tape distortion etc.
In a similar vein, I also think of "warmth" in the sense of timbre and harmonic complexity.
So for instance there is the "warmth" of struck or resonating wood, a certain organic woody character, vs say metal being struck or resonating.
Some systems (speakers in particular) seem to have, or convey, a sense of timbral "warmth" especially with wooden instruments, that to my ears seem more consonant with those real instruments.
There's also "warmth" in the sense of timbral/harmonic complexity.
If I compare even the highest (steel) strings plucked on a real acoustic guitar with many guitars on recordings, what I hear is a greater richness from the real thing, thicker, "warmer" in the sense of a greater richness in terms of thickness and all the harmonics and overtones. The top strings of guitars on stereo systems often sound "thinner, cooler, more icy" sounding to my ears. (In fact, I don't know if it's a bit of synesthesia, but the harmonic content of strings on most acoustic guitars including my own produce in my mind a slightly "golden" impression - the mix with the guitar body - and if acoustic guitars on a sound system never cause this same "color" to appear in my mind, then nothing ever sounds quite right to me on a system). Even a real chime struck sounds "warmer" in this sense of harmonic richness, vs what you typically get through a recording on a stereo system.
So, yes, terms like "warmth" can differ depending on who is using the term and in which situation it's being used. Sometimes it will require asking for some additional, specific explanation or description. But...often that's the best we can do in many circumstances, and it's all part of putting subjective experience in to words.
