Do distortion 's affect enjoyment of speaker?

It's obvious that the better the distortion specs, the more
you will like listening to the speakers. That's the way
everyone does it. Saves you the trouble of listening and
making up your own mind. Same goes for amplifiers as well.
I suggest one of the old DB Systems amps with 0.0000001%
THD.

08-05-14: Chayro
It's obvious that the better the distortion specs, the more
you will like listening to the speakers. That's the way
everyone does it. Saves you the trouble of listening and
making up your own mind. Same goes for amplifiers as well.
I suggest one of the old DB Systems amps with 0.0000001%
THD.
Chayro

this must have been written with your tongue firmly in your cheek!! ;-)

I am in a good position to offer an opinion as I started out with Infinity Reference series speakers which have a basic wood cabinet, and comparing those speakers to my current Magico S5's and other extremely inert speakers like Crystal Arabesque which I have experience with, my view is yes speaker distortion does negatively impact your enjoyment of music.

Firstly, cheaper wood cabinets can 'sing', in effect adding harmonics to the sound which distorts the original signal. In terms of driver distortion, ported designs like Wilson in my experience suffer from bass overhang which creates a bloated sound as the cone is unable to follow the signal as accurately as Magico's sealed design. This smears the upper frequencies which reduces the speaker's coherency and can lead to listener fatigue.

The Magico S5's for example use extremely rigid cabinets made from 1/2" thick aluminium extrusions. The S5's, like all Magico speakers also benefit from a sealed design as I mentioned which allows the bass drivers to operate in perfect piston motion and more accurately follow the signal. But of course there is no such thing as a free lunch, and the trade off is usually lower efficiency.

With Magico speakers (perhaps more than any other dynamic speaker i've heard) your ears need time to adjust due to the absolute lack of any perceptible distortion products, the accuracy of the drivers & exceptional resolution. You hear more of the information in the recording, including subtle background information and layering in the music which adds a whole new dimension to the music in terms of realism. A wordy response, but hope that helps.

I'll second Viridian's response, and I'll add that distortion measurements will be considerably different for a given speaker depending on what volume level and input power level they are taken at. Not only on the levels at the instant the measurement is taken, but I would expect also on the history of those levels over the previous seconds or perhaps even minutes, since that history will affect voice-coil temperature at any given instant. Unless the THD numbers that are being compared for different speakers are based on levels that are indicated and that are similar, apples are being compared with oranges. And as Psag stated earlier, lack of standardization of how such measurements are taken is rampant.

Also, as Marty alluded to earlier, how objectionable a given THD value is depends on the frequency that is being distorted. It also depends greatly on how the TOTAL Harmonic Distortion is distributed among the individual harmonic frequencies.

As I've said in a number of past threads, IMO the main usefulness of specs and measurements is in identifying and **ruling out** candidates that would be poor matches with either other components in the system (especially the power amplifier, in the case of speakers), or with the listener's requirements (e.g., peak volume capability, physical characteristics, perhaps deep bass extension, etc.). But not in selecting among candidates which make that cut. And in most cases THD numbers are useless in both respects.

Regards,
-- Al