Excellent article in Stereophile


This is one of the most interesting articles I've read on harmonic distortion and its affect on sound quality and why the classic THD is a worthless specification. 

https://www.stereophile.com/content/harmonic-convergence-effect-component-tweaking
128x128jaytor
Not being an electronics engineer I often have no idea what he is talking about. He is not very good at describing things to lay people.
I would never pay for his time. Judging by the way he keeps his bench he spends most of it looking for things. 
I stopped reading specs around 1969 or so after I built a Dyna Stereo 120. An upgrade from the stereo 70? Lesson learned. I have always gravitated towards class A amps since I owned a pair of Krell KMA 100's
I have no idea if it is because of what he is talking about. But, on this one I will agree with millercarbon. The only devices you should trust are your own ears. 

mijostyn
"
Not being an electronics engineer I often have no idea what he is talking about."

I commend, applaud, and congratulate you for your candor, honesty, and transparency in acknowledging you're limitations in answering, responding, and opining on the comments referenced hear and such willingness to acknowledge limitations should be more common ideally in this forum.
Alls I know is I'm way way happier now that I abandoned technical excellence in favor of stuff I enjoy listening to.
The sound that no doubt measured best. Of that I have no doubt.
I've been maintaining for some time that harmonic distortion should be measured according to a weighting system that assigns a low number to lower ordered spectra and a much higher number to higher ordered spectra, especially the 7th and beyond.

But the flip side of that would be a spec sheet that allowed you to know how the equipment sounds! The industry doesn't want **that** - yikes! We've had the ability to do this for some time, but no collective will.
think atmosphere nailed it. Most don't know about the weighting equation and only see the product or end result.

if a person takes the time to measure each multiple orders on the primary freq, and then finds a way to minimize those, and ignore the product (i.e. answer) then you are getting somewhere.

If you read some of the papers written by Norm Crowhurst back in the 50s, you can see some did not care for the approach.
but the FTC adopted that means as teh way to measure amps, and back in the day, all the mfgrs jumped on board, so the die was cast.

J