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Ten Percent Distortion?

I have a little Panasonic SA-XR25 digital receiver for my TV rig (I can't really call it HT). Driving some good speakers it sounds great, and cost me all of $287. Tonight I was killing some time wandering around the Best Buy shop looking at similar electronics from Panasonic, and others, and I noticed that output power was quoted at 10 percent distortion! At first I thought this was a missprint, surely they meant 1 percent or even 0.1 percent. However several units, from several manufacturers, were described this way. Back home I quickly checked the SA-XR25 spec and was reassured to find a reasonable 0.3 percent stated.

What the heck is going on? Wouldn't 100 watts at 0.3 percent sell better than 140 watts at 10 percent?
eldartford
eldartford OP
4,262 posts
 
Actually, I think that "10 percent distortion" would turn off even the most nonaudiophillic people. Everyone knows what "distortion" means, but plenty of audiophiles don't understand watts.
pragmatist
336 posts
 
My personal favorite is the Marantz PM-17 integrated amp that is "only" 60 watts. At sixty watts,into 8 ohms,Marantz lists its total harmonic distortion at less than one one hundredth of one percentage point. Imagine what its watts rating would be at,say,one percent total harmonic distortion?
twl
3,251 posts
 
If it sounds good to you, what difference does it make what the specs say? Do you like it less now?

Seriously, you certainly know why they do it.
Simply to claim higher wattage.
You've been around long enough to know.
eldartford OP
4,262 posts
 
Twl....Maybe it's because I've been around so long that distortion is of interest to me. When I started out, harmonic and IM distortion in even the best amps were both over one percent. Technical improvements have made numbers on the order of a few tenths commonplace, and this is the big advance that I see in audio amps. Sure, distortion specs are not the whole story, but (IMHO) an amp that starts out with more than 1 percent distortion has two strikes against it.

Pragmatist...Most amps exhibit an abrupt increase in distortion at some power level (a "knee" in the curve), and you don't gain much more power by citing a higher distortion level.
bundee1
147 posts
 
The sales people at BestBuy seem to know what distortion is, as that seemed to be the only selling point this chump was using to get some poor guy to buy the most expensive Yamaha receiver they had. I tried to convince him that 140 wpc was way more than his 6ohm 91db Yamaha speakers needed to sound loud.
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