ricevs,
I agree with much of what you just said. My main question was about the bass from the Goal Zero. Comparing to wall AC, Is it looser and fuller, in other words quantitatively greater but qualitatively worse as with old school tube amps? Is it tighter but quantitatively less? I assume you found that aside from the bass, the Goal Zero is more accurate in midrange/HF?
Still, noise reduction easily occurs when you roll off HF. With crude Dolby noise reduction, I remember HF hiss was nearly eliminated this way, but information in the rest of the range was severely destroyed, creating lifeless sound. The sonic effect is its own type of distortion. So noise is not synonymous with distortion.
We want LIFE to all the instruments. For wind instruments, you want to hear the nice tone, but also the mechanical sounds such as keys, valves, spitting. Some people seek to get rid of these extraneous "noisy" sounds, but all these sounds are part of the complete sound of the instrument and must be revealed although not exaggerated.