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I guess I'm just deaf

I'm being earnest: I am substantially deaf above 10 kHz. That might make a difference in my evaluations. Despite involvement in hi-fi for 40 years, I know I haven't heard the range of equipment that you have, especially high end. On these accounts I recognized that I don't have the credibility that you do.

Morricab said, "You can see this very clearly in the second plot you posted. The 3db of feedback has peaks out to 6th harmonic but the 15db now has peaks out to at least 10th (its off screen but the 10db feedback has a peak at 10Khz) and the 15db 7th harmonic is much bigger than the 10db, which is much bigger than the 6db etc.

I can't see what's off the graph, but I can see that the higher order harmonics are progressively lower in amplitude and that all are lower in amplitude with higher feedback. The HOs become signal-tracking noise: not good, but at some point so small as to be irrelevant

Morricab adds further, "You guys have to learn that 2nd and 3rd harmonics are not an issue even up to several percent, its the other crap that is the problem. Up to at least a couple % 2nd harmonic is INAUDIBLE even with pure tones let alone real music.
... Your comment tells me you haven't understood the concept of masking if you had you would realize that low order distortion is different because of masking and high order distortion, especially at lower levels, is not masked.
"

But so I'm clear, are you saying the 2nd order HD is masked? Even at 2,3,4,5% distortion? Or rather, is it the 2nd order that's doing the masking? There is nothing new about the assertion that 2nd HD is pleasant sounding. I continue to suspect that 2nd order HD masks the grain and etch that some s/s amps undoubtedly have: in my mind this could the explanation for the popularity of tube preamps -- and even tube buffers -- used ahead of s/s amps.




Dmitri Shostakovich



Edits: 07/06/12 07/06/12

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