When does speaker distortion become audible?


I recently got some seas excel speakers and when I fired them up for the first time I thought to myself "wow, there's no distortion".

I find this interesting because I never really thought I was hearing any distortion from my previous speakers but maybe I was, and just didn't pick up on it until now.

Interesting side note, I think my personal speaker taste is moving towards less analytical, super detailed sound to a more musical, tone based preference (I think I'm becoming less tone deaf, lol).
128x128b_limo
Above 10%??? How much above... Years ago some of the test repots would give distortion figures in speaker tests. Usually just for woofers. I'd have to do a lot of looking & then try to translate it into the real world.
Sounds like you've got more coherence which can and will afford you both better clarity and tone. You don't have to lose one to get the other.

All the best,
Nonoise
There exists an astonishing amount of differences in capability of speakers to render the signal accurately/beautifully. It is common when comparing speakers to have the sense that one is far more clean/clear/distortion-free than another.
The other half of what Douglas said is that our memory is very poor & gets there very quickly. We remember in a "somewhat" fashion. Lots of speakers may sound great until we do side by side auditions.
Overall, it was good or not quite good. And lots of us have that problem. It's never as accurate as gettig a "bad ice cube."