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RE: What I find perplexing

One thing that Crowhurst noted is that when you apply a lot of feedback you have essentially an infinite number of harmonic and IM distortion components running endlessly through the amp and this creates a signal correlated "noise floor" that obscures information.

The early work from Shorter that was picked up by Cheever and others is that the weighting of higher order harmonics is VERY strong and most importantly the most pernicious at low SPL, where the ears sensitivity to higher order harmonics is the highest. Many SS and class D amps do worse relatively with distortion at low power and also importantly higher frequencies, where we are more sensitive to them.

Can we hear those very low level harmonics? Probably not individually but in aggregate I think we can and this is what was the implication from Shorter...the pattern is the issue not just a few harmonics. In the case of the Benchmark it is the sum total of those just above the "noise" and likely the "noise" itself that is not really noise.

This is why you should stop ready the ASR guys and their nonsense that completely ignores observational listening. Does it make it harder to make a decision if you stop listening to the pure numbers without context of how it influences sound, yes...does it make it harder to make a GOOD decision? No but you have to have the ears to discern...

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