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RE: The secret to "good" sound ISN'T 0% higher order sidebands ...

If you look at the measurements of many good SETs you will see that the THD is usually well below 1% at 1 watt and continues to decrease logarithmically as you drop down lower in power and increase logarithmically as you go up in power (looks like a straight line on the usual Log/log plots presented in Stereophile and Soundstage).

What this means is this, not only is the content predominantly low order harmonics at low power even that is very small and completely inaudible. Plus there are no nasty harmonics to interfere.

If you use reasonably sensitive speakers then you will never be in a region where you are at 2 or 3% distortion except on music peaks where the loudness of the music works against the audibility of the distortion anyway.

Note that a lot of amps actually have higher relative distortion at low power than at higher power...this is probably because of residual crossover distortion or some other level independent type distortion.

If the amps in question made 3% 2nd order at 1 watt then you would have a good point...as such they usually are more like 0.5% at this power, which is completely inaudible.

One thing my "ilk" can do that seems to be lacking by many on this forum is the ability to read and interpret the data that is available and put it in context of what various authors are saying about distortion and audibility.


All distortion at some level does damage to the signal...2nd and 3rd order are no different...just more consonant with music than the higher orders. Also, it is clear that IMD is not so consonant with music (even 2nd and 3rd order) and it is what Nelson Pass calls in his paper on distortion "The elephant in the room".

Again, Keith Howard demonstrated that no added distortion sounded better than any pattern he tried BUT the montonic pattern was the least objectionable.



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