Fidelity vs. Musicality...........Is there a tug of War?


I lean towards Musicality in systems.
ishkabibil
The Benchmark AHB2 has pushed distortion and noise so low it is inaudible to humans. Kijanki is correct you might not like it but the AHB2 is as close to a straight wire with gain as we've gotten. All this blabbing about harmonics is nonsense with this amplifier they are inaudible , even and odd. 
High Fidelity means something. It isn't whatever you happen to prefer. 

Ideally, high-fidelity equipment has inaudible noise and distortion, and a flat (neutral, uncolored) frequency response within the human hearing range.

No, you actually prefer an amp that adds distortion, and your benchmark reduces clarity.

This is not true.

Our hearing evolved over millennia to interpret the fundamental frequency and even ordered harmonics as natural and clear sound. There is no natural sound in nature that is not accompanied by even ordered harmonics.
Not true as well.  Piano does not have harmonics at all.  It has overtones that are at different frequencies than harmonics.  Clarinet has only odd order harmonics (acting like close tube resonator).
Pure sine wave doesn't have any harmonics, etc.
It is obvious that unique sound of (odd harmonics only) Clarinet will be altered when system adds even harmonics.

The 0.00011% THD is achieved by dialing in large amounts of NFB. NFB results in odd ordered harmonics

Not true.  It results in odd harmonics (TIM distortions) only if NFB is recursive. AHB2 uses non-recursive feedback.  Signal fed back does not come to the input section of the amplifier, but to completely different error amplifier, that runs in parallel.

Even in minute amounts, odd ordered harmonics sound unnatural, sterile and not musical. Odd ordered harmonics do not occur naturally.

This is wrong.  Where you learning this ???  Almost all instruments (with few exceptions), produce series of even and odd harmonics.

Odd harmonics do not occur naturally ???  What about Clarinet that has only odd harmonics?
Speak to a musician and this rhetoric about harmonics....

They would think the comments are far from "musical".

It "moves" you or it doesn't .

Sometimes even better thru a AC Delco Radio.

"It "moves" you or it doesn't ".

+1

This is what I go by but clearly it's not the credo for many posting here. 

I can't help but suspect it makes a difference if you actually play an instrument.