Why do we want to distortions?

op

i believe the recording and mastering processes ’bleach out’ the sound to some degree ... there are losses at each step... therefore the sympathetic distortions in reproduction ’rebuild’ or ’restore’ some of the warmth, body, and dimensionality of the music (even most ’analog’ recordings are digitized, and even analog handling has losses)

like every time you store or handle or freeze food, you lose some of the texture and original ’realness’ of the food... thus ’seasoning’ often make it nice again... different, but nicer than if you didn’t...

And there you have it: Ralph (atmasphere) just gave you a thumbnail version of the master-class in amplifier design he could teach

@bdp24 you are mistaken, this is not a thumbnail (I know you are not criticizing him, quite the opposite, but I have to say something), I have been following close Ralph’s post and I had the chance to share 1 hour with him with no one else around at RMAF, and another hour at the Florida show, having time with Ralph believe me you should be paying him for it, he was wearing flip flops and honestly I understood 60% percent of what he was saying back then years ago (sorry Ralph if you got the impression I could understand it all)

This post of him I will save it and it is golden, I think with the years he is becoming less cryptic and more on the teacher side but what he is saying right there is bible code.
I know, I know, many will say he doesn’t know what he is talking about, he has a lot of haters, but he is giving you right there in that post the details you need to understand distortions.
After all his amps do not distort :)

Tubes when they do distort its smoother even order harmonics most solid state are odd harmonics . That being said mosfets, bipolar, Jfets have tube like characters . Tubes do add bloom 
Especially specific power tubes like 300 Bs  but have excellent midrange sonics.

@bdp24 sorry, my poor choice of words, You are not mistaken, it was just an understatement IMHO

Cheers

Luis

We said Tube Amp Sounds Better :-)

Who said Medium Rare Steaks tastes better?