set vs otl, which is the most musical

Another very important point is that any SET is only producing 10% 2nd-order HD at its max output or very close to it. For this reason, I do think it's a good idea to plan a system with the SETs not required to go about 50% or so output. At that level, you're normally talking about a few percent THD, 90% 2nd harmonic, proven in testing to be entirely inaudible.

One study showed 7th order HD to be around 20x more objectionable than 2nd order.

Thanks for your insightful responses, Audiokinesis and Paulofbrecht. What you said was certainly pretty shocking to me! I did some googling to try to find those papers you were talking about by Geddes and Lee, but I have not been able to come up with anything. Would you happen to have some useful links?

Amfibius, the papers by Geddes and Lee I mentioned were presented at the 115th convention of the Audio Engineering Society, in October 2003. You can order them from the Society. They are entitled "Auditory Perception of Nonlinear Distortion - Theory" and "Auditory Perception of Nonlinear Distortion", and can be ordered as Preprint Number 5890 and Preprint Number 5891.

If you are an Audio Engineerng Society member, you can read them online or print them out.

Duke