Are future improvements in Amp/PreAmps slowing to a crawl?

kosst

Everybody knows you can manipulate a signal to sound like all kinds of things

Well that is certainly true especially if you have a way of adding your own flavor of distortion.

...even those things you claim your gear does.

Here is where there is a problem. It is the absolute absence of manipulation that makes it distortion-free. You know like air.
You must be disappointed when you go to a live concert. Do you bring your own bag of distortion with you? Or wait for the CD version to come out and listen to it at home where the "proper" amount of distortion can be added.

I can't wrap my head around the idea that we need distortion in our playback systems.

Your amplifier circuit by itself (without adding distortion) apparently is making enough mistakes (errors) to warrant having to do something to hide or cover up whats happening.  

...applies some positive phase second order distortion through the NFB loop balance to warm the sound up and open up the stage.

Translation: without adding second order - the raw circuit is "cool " sounding and has a narrow or restricted sound stage. Yes?

...applies some positive phase second order distortion through the NFB loop balance to warm the sound up and open up the stage.

Translation: without adding second order - the raw circuit is "cool " sounding and has a narrow or restricted sound stage. Yes?

No.

Sorry my bad. So I guess that the raw circuit is fine by itself. Its just that if you want to make the sound even richer and fuller than the original recording - then you add the extra distortion. 

This also gives you the added bonus of listening to the performance on a larger or wider sound stage than the one they actually used for the recording?

Is it me?