Full Question:

Hi,I just purchased a 2340W that is due to arrive tomorrow.I was reading a forum exchange between Bram and some customers about the 2461W. The takeaway for me is that I should expect the 2340W to be warmer than the higher-end model. However, I should not mess with the factory settings.While I wish I could currently afford the 2461W, I was curious what practical advice you can give me when color-grading on the 2340W. (I'm using Resolve.) Always push the reds a bit? Build a display LUT for my Blackmagic card?

Answer:
To be clear the LM-2340W, when measured with a very high-end ($30,000) spectroradiometer is objectively speaking not warmer in its white balance than an LM-2461W. However, perceptually speaking when you put both units side-by-side the LM-2340W will look warmer (to most observers) than the LM-2461W. This is basically a shortcoming of the CIE1931 color science models used to characterize human color perception within our industry and is generally referred to as metamerism failure (failure to accurately calculate metamers between very disparate spectral distributions). Video Explaining Metamerism Failure

The thing to keep in mind is that while the human eye is extraordinarily adept at making comparative distinctions it does a fairly poor job of making absolute judgements. So when put next to one another you would immediately see a difference, but if you were to view content on the LM-2340W one day and the LM-2461W the next day the content would look quite similar to you. The human eye adjusts to the white balance of a display quite well so a 100% white field that looks green compared to a more reddish looking display sitting next to it more often than not only looks more green because of the display sitting next to it, which again objectively speaking could be every bit as accurate with respect to the XYZ values measured by a high quality measuring device. If you simply do not put those displays next to one another your eye will quickly adjust to the primary display you are looking at and tend to accept the white field being displayed as very neutral.

There are a couple of important points to take away from this:

1. If you put displays with significantly different spectral distributions next to one another you should expect that they will perceptually look different even if they are calibrated to objectively measure the same. This is why we strongly encourage users to either use the same model display (same spectral distribution) in applications requiring multiple displays in the same onset or edit suite environment or to simply accept one as the primary color reference (and perhaps even adjust the other displays in the room by eye to match the reference). The worst thing you can do is to not settle on a reference, which will lead to a lot of time wasted making decisions based on comparative differences that likely will have little impact outside of that sort of comparative environment.

2. What is more critical than either objective or perceptual white balance, because our eyes tend to adjust to that so well, is how well levels and color track on any given display. In short, having things like accurate gamma response (in greyscale and primaries) is ultimately more important than the rather subjective warmness or coolness of a display as it compares to other displays. These relative differences between the way things are displayed on a single screen are extremely important because while your eyes may adjust well to white balance differences, they will quickly catch anomalies in things like gamma response. To put this more plainly, if you grade everything to look good on a monitor with a 1.8 gamma response it isn't going to look good on a display with a 2.4 or 2.2 gamma response. This is why having an accurate calibrated monitor is still so critical despite the issue of metamerism failure that permeates the modern display industry.

So to sum up I would not do anything to your LM-2340W. If you grade at its preset calibrated position your content will generally look acceptable and good across other properly calibrated displays. In fact, any adjustments you make will objectively speaking make the monitor less accurate.

On a related note, if you were doing side by side comparisons with other display types on the market you can generally expect the following:

1. The LM-2461W tends to match high-end projection devices used in professional DI environments extremely well. The LM-2340W will match these a bit less, but may actually look a bit more like many of the consumer display devices on the market (especially those using white LED backlight systems, which many LCD TVs now do).

2. The LM-2461W, because it is 10 bit, will show smoother gradients.

3. The LM-2461W, because it is a wide gamut unit and employs an advanced color fidelity engine (CFE) to carve out your desired color space, is objectively speaking more accurate in terms of matching any given color space's primary and secondary coordinates. The LM-2340W is a fairly close match to Rec 709 as is, but does not employ a CFE board to carve out a more precise color space. This means that in terms of XYZ values for white balance the LM-2461W and LM-2340W are objectively equally accurate, but with respect to how they match up to the desired color space the LM-2461W is a more accurate device.