Can RGB LED simulate incandescent bulb 'glow'?

[NTL2009]

Maybe more of an optics/biology question than electrical, but...

My wife wanted some lighting on a cabinet nick-knack shelf. I thought it would be fun/interesting to use a strip of RGB LEDs and a controller to adjust the light color to whatever we wanted, plus the LEDs would be less heat and mostly low voltage wiring.

I bought a strip of 5050 LEDs and a controller with an individual pot and PWM output for each color. It seems to work as expected, giving fine/smooth control of each color. I didn't put it on a scope or reverse engineer the controller, but I'm pretty sure it's an analog control over PWM, smooth adjustments, not steps. I can get full R, G or B, and all the color mixes you'd expect with R-G, R-B, and G-B, and all 3 for bright white to a tinted white with adjustments.

But... I just can't seem to duplicate that soft amber-yellow glow of an incandescent bulb. I start with RED, bring up the GREEN, and I get close, but then it starts getting too green before I seem to reach a nice amber. Turning up the BLUE doesn't seem to help, it just moves it towards purple-ish.

Is it possible? Or is the monochromatic nature of LEDS mixing narrow-band RGB just too different to our eyes compared to the wide-band, red-shifted filament bulb?

I ended up buying some filament auto bulbs, 5W dome-light style (hard to find on a search, the LED versions come up to the top of the list!), and powering 3 of them with a 9V supply, measuring ~ 2.7W each - so not so much heat, nice amber glow, and will have a very long life at that lower voltage.

But I'm still curious, and I may want to use this strip somewhere else in the future - can I duplicate a filament glow from RGB LEDs?

 

[hutchphd]

See Metamer.
So the answer is no.
It turns out that the flesh tones are particularly difficult to match (much to the chagrin of color TV designers of yore).

 

[Rive]

Maybe replacing the LEDs with amber ones?
Or there are those LED filaments in - well, in filament colors, since they are meant to fake incadescent filaments

 

[NTL2009]

Thanks for those replies. I was pretty sure that the metamer effect was in play, just didn't know what to call it, or if that was the actual reason. Interesting write up.

Yes, I considered actual filament colored LEDs, but that wouldn't give me control over the color, and you never know just how they look until you try them. I just read up to verify, but those work by using a phosphor, excited a blue LED, so unlike RGB, they seem to be able to find a better match to a warm filament. And it looks like the phosphors are more wide-band.

It's disappointing that the RGB won't quite get there, having the ability to change the color with that controller was nice. I can at least get 'moods' with red, green, blue, orange, purple, cyan, white and lots in-between. Just not the amber shade that I wanted!

BTW, for reference, here's what I purchased:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008GY6WM2/?tag=pfamazon01-20
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01D4Y7Z4C/?tag=pfamazon01-20