Has anyone heard the new North American products preamp and amp?

mapman,

The consensus generally is that harmonic distortion specs alone tell you little meaningful about the resulting sound

You are making my point. The same way the SS amps with 0.005 % cannot match the warm full sound of a tube amp with 0.5 %

I knew years ago that the THD measurement gear seemed to ignore or miss something that should be relevant. It is microscopic variations in speed caused by the active amplifying process.It is Doppler on a very fine scale. 

If you try to raise the pitch of a 1KHz tone so it becomes a 2KHz tone, what is the very first thing to happen? (picture analog gear with an old fashioned knob for frequency). The very instant that you put pressure on the knob to turn it towards a higher frequency, you start to alter the phase angle of the current 1KHZ tone and the instantaneous frequency has to pass through every frequency between 1KHz and 2 KHz. So not long after you try to raise the frequency it puts out 1001 Hz. 1002Hz and so on until you reach the desired frequency.

When amplifiers produce harmonic distortion the same action occurs. as the trace of a perfect sine wave hits a non-linear event - the result will be a harmonic at 2KHz. However if we go back and slow down the events we can see that the first thing to happen is the beginning of the fundamental to move up the spectrum towards 2KHz. If we can monitor the shape of the sine wave and notice as soon as it appears to deviate from ideal it would still be within less than a cycle of 1000 hz. Knowing that the direction is headed up the spectrum we can apply a phase countermeasure to force it down the spectrum by an equal amount. This essentially locks the fundamental in place at its own frequency never having the opportunity to shift or drift up or down the spectrum. It is phase locked with a control of the phase down to nano-degrees. The distortion is virtual zero. If you prefer a measurement - how about -250 db. (150 db below the noise floor)
I hesitate to release the other specs about this amplifying method because if you are having a hard time absorbing the accuracy achieved it will get even more incredible. 

Roger

I love to read these discussions though I'm not a genius or in anyway a scientist. I am however someone who has lived with live music all my life,in my home from childhood , and through becoming a musician and marrying and excellent pianist.  I have been in pursuit  as a New York newspaper series on the "audiophile search of the. Holy Grail"  included my comments many years ago with the great designers of those days. I have worked the shows, helping set up rooms to achieve  the best results in difficult situations, and been fortunate to walk through the designs of many of the best designers. I love music and have longed for the equipment to get out of its way.  The battles between tubes vs solid state . System  matching, wire choices always to accommodate the weaknesses of the equipment.  I remember when the absolute sound magazine gave Roger Paul a Golden ear award and one of the great reviewers made the comment that Roger was really headed in the right direction. Wish she could have been here to hear where that direction has lead.  I've watched the journey.  It's been rough due to many uncontrollable.  I am enjoying my system more than ever before.  My wife asked me to teach her to operate the system after 47 years of marriage.  Thank you Roger that though life has thrown you many difficult challenges you never gave up on a vision of bringing music into our homes.  I hope now we can get enough people to really listen to the amp and preamp and hear for themselves what I'm enjoying more and more each day and it's still breaking in.

Roger, good explanation. Thnx

gdhal,

what happens when the two speakers (assuming two channels) are not precisely (as in less than 1000th of an inch) aligned and distanced from the listeners ears? Is distortion re-introduced?

Actually -The only thing that will happen is it will project the performance but with the center stage slightly to the left or right depending on which speaker is slightly closer. It is a shift in your viewpoint. 

Roger

Thanks you for the response Roger. I suppose the center stage being off left-right does make sense. Given the level of information you have included in this thread, it probably would have been more efficient had you included all of this in your white paper. In any case, as I originally stated the technical content of this post is a bit "over-my-head". Perhaps that is my loss as I enjoy the hobby and love the music! Peace and best of luck gaining whatever traction you need/want to have your equipment/design principles be as ubiquitous as possible.