There are a lot of factors that can affect pace and tonal balance can affect resolution in many ways too.
An overly warm tonal balance is the result of distortion and noise, it reduces resolution, rounds off leading edges so it compromises transient response and makes the music seem "slow".
Other types of noise can accentuate leading edges, this sounds zingy, fast, but often bright. Also, it's fatiguing due to being overly stimulating.
Room acoustics or issues with speaker/subwoofer design can also cause delays and overhangs, which muddles the music and can make is sound slow. A poorly designed ported speaker or subwoofer, a majority of back-loaded horns, a simple OB woofer with a lot of cancelation all sound slow and muddled. Overhang or overly slow decay times due to poor room acoustics have a similar effect and make the music seem slow.
Amplifier and speaker matching is another. Once the damping factor gets too low the amp loses electrical control over the drivers and you end up with loose, boomy and distorted bass, and loss of control and resolution in mid and high frequencies. This is why many vintage drivers use a tight suspension, the combination of amps with high high output impedance and often light gauge speaker cables with enough gauge to handle the amperage, but which also add significant resistance, combine to reduce electrical damping to the point where the amp can't control the driver properly, so a stiff suspension compensates for this and mechanically controls the driver. But then the driver isn't compatible with amps with low output impedance, you get too little bass.
Warmth added by cables reduces resolution and smears detail, which also rounds off leading edges and makes the sound slow, but cables can also accentuate leading edges as described previously. Gold plating is an example of one cause of warmth, and impure silver is an example of a cause of accentuating leading edges. Noise is the cause of brightness or edge.
The better the system in terms of avoiding noise that causes accentuated leading edges, a bright sound, harshness or edge, the less warmth you need to compensate to achieve the right tonal balance and avoid fatigue. This results in better pace, clarity, resolution, soundstage, and timbre.
I can also share that in terms of cables, as the years go by I have reduced the overall warmth my cables add to the sound. A majority of my sales are from repeat customers, and as my customers improve their systems, the less warmth they want from cables for reasons previously stated. On a whole, looking at the hobby and industry in general, as component manufacturers design and sell better sources and amplification, the less warmth people want from cables. I am actually about to revise my current top-end IC offerings again, currently I have two main designs, one that uses gold alloyed with UPOCC silver, and the other that uses pure silver ribbon wire, into one design that offers the best of both and will be an improvement on both. It will be a bit less warm than either current cable. I've gradually decreased the amount of gold in my cables, it's now half of what it was 10 years ago, and I think things are now at a point where I won't even use gold at all, instead of gold or ribbon wire, I'll be making a heavier gauge cable using conventional round wire that will offer better resolution than the gold cable and superior noise rejection and self-noise characteristics over ribbon wire. Also, a new top-end cable will be coming out that does away with teflon entirely and results in a sound where the conductor material can no longer be identified by listening. It's not warm, but there's also no hint of brightness. Resolution is superior to anything I've ever tested, but at the same time it's also the least fatiguing cable I've ever tested.
Finally, I think for folks who want to improve their system and currently have a system with a warm tonal balance, the way forward is both by a reduction of noise and other fatiguing artifacts, as well as a reduction in warmth. For those who are willing and able, one largely unaddressed issue is the relatively poor quality wire and connectors often used by component and speaker manufacturers. People will spend big-$ on external cables all the while leaving much lower quality wire and connectors in their components and speakers. This results in mismatched materials such as using a combination of gold and rhodium plating (especially in AC power parts), brass binding posts and signal level connectors, and far lower quality wire. If you're willing to spend 5-6 figures on cables, please consider paying a tech to install high quality IEC inlets, RCA and XLR ins/outs, binding posts and wire in your components and speakers.
