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

costco_eruption,

Whoa! What’s with all the angst, Costco? OK, let me take a different tack. Let’s look at it this way. There’s a sailboat out at sea ⛵️ and it’s in the doldrums, you know where the air is very still. Where the air is not moving. Where it’s velocity is effectively zero as well as force. If the air was moving the sails would catch the wind, no? Only a fool would argue that air in a listening room is moving. The kinetic energy of the molecules is irrelevant. Only a fool would argue that the speed of sound is not constant in a given listening room. Any listening room. Even if it was in a wind tunnel. 🌬

kosst,

Harmonic distortion is caused by nonlinearity in the gain devices. Period.

I agree 100% - we know it is caused by nonlinearity I'm not disputing that.
I am saying that I know the means by which harmonic distortion is actually generated by the nonlinearity.

At any point along the [sign wave] that the gain is increased or decreased you have essentially speeded up or slowed down that segment of the sign wave which makes it appear as a higher or lower frequency. This is the only way that 2khz energy can exit a circuit fed by 1khz.

What I'm saying is the actual means for producing the harmonics is directly caused by the damaging effect the a nonlinear event has on a pure 1khz tone. We are on the same page but I can go further and describe the chain of events that ends up with the harmonics.
I have studied a kind of slow motion observation of those events in order to place a trap that is triggered by the very first sign that it has come upon a non linear obstacle You can nip it in the bud if you know how to detect that it is starting to distort. The very first thing to go is the phase of the pure tone - this is the birth of a harmonic. My circuit can spot this at such an early point that it can be stopped before it even has left the fundamental frequency of 1khz. The detector can spot a shift in phase of micro-degrees and apply a phase countermeasure that prevents it from continuing shift in phase and ultimately in frequency (as monitored on the spectrum as 2khz)

A non linear amplifier produces harmonics by literally manipulating the phase and frequency of the input signal. Period.

If you can stop the manipulation from happening - you have stopped it from distorting. As long as the detector can monitor the phase of the fundamental and apply a countermeasure to prevent it from going any further - it now has no means of distorting.

Classic negative feedback is supposed to do the same thing but it can't.
It relies on monitoring the instantaneous voltage at the output and compares a reduced version back to the input (typically a differential pair). This method is monitoring the voltage along the vertical axis. Because of this configuration - vital information is lagging do to the fact that damaging events have already occurred by the time you notice a change in voltage.

Roger is claiming circuits alter play speed AND he claims that's the source of distortion. That's pure BS.

This is exactly what I'm claiming.

kosst,

Can you explain to me how an amplifier can produce energy at 2khz when all it has to work with is the pure 1khz tone applied at the input?
If you don't think it is using a modified version of the input to do this then if you stop the 1khz input - does the circuit still continue to produce 2khz energy? No. In fact there are no harmonics anywhere in the spectrum with no input.

The 2khz harmonic IS energy from the 1khz signal that has been warped and bent by the nonlinear event. It literally changes the shape if the pure tone (which is not pure any more) into a brief segment of what looks like a 2khz tone.

For that tiny moment - that small segment of the input signal has been moved up a FULL OCTAVE.
This can be seen by running a tape machine at twice the playback speed.

Don't tell me this is not happening - I know for a fact that it is. This is what I have been studying for years. By detecting the first sign of distortion (the initial phase shift that starts on its way to becoming a harmonic) and stopping it from going further - you have an amplifier circuit that has no distortion.