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RE: I think there are a few.

Who do you think you're talking to - another clueless audiophool?

Your demeanor is suggesting that may be the case. But maybe not...

I run a recording studio and in it is an LP mastering lathe. In setting it up, we ran it with several different amplifiers, just to see how they interact with the load, which is benign. We used the same cut and ran the same current on the head with each amplifier.

The stock amplifier is a traditional transistor circuit. Also used was a MOSFET power amplifier and a stock Dynaco ST-70 that was refurbished but otherwise stock. Of course we used a set of our own amplifiers and also a higher-power SET.

The same track was recorded with each with a lockout groove as obviously we could not cut the whole lacquer at once. Essentially what we created a recording that demonstrates the differences between the amps.

This media is literally created from the amplifiers themselves as the cutterhead is a load similar to a loudspeaker. You can clearly hear the differences between the various amplifiers on any system. IOW it does not matter the playback- the difference between each of the amplifiers is readily audible, even on a lowly HK reciever from the 1970s with cheap speakers.

So we can hear the difference between two amps that measure exactly the same on the bench in terms of bandwidth, and they do so in a predicable fashion, based on the kind of distortion they make. So yes, the slight amounts of odd ordered harmonic distortion that are characteristic of 99% of solid state amplifiers does indeed cause a harshness and a brightness. You can hear it on the lacquer. That we can hear trace amounts of this distortion is because our ears happened to be tuned for this sort of thing through evolution.

Understanding that fact is likely what separates us here; I have been looking into human hearing rules and from your demeanor it sounds like you are more focused on the specs. The issue, IOW is that the specs have no meaning if they don't also have something to do with human hearing/perceptual rules.

As the engineer at Scott put it, to paraphrase, "If the measurement is not audible you are measuring the wrong thing."

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