Are future improvements in Amp/PreAmps slowing to a crawl?

kosst

Everybody knows you can manipulate a signal to sound like all kinds of things

Well that is certainly true especially if you have a way of adding your own flavor of distortion.

...even those things you claim your gear does.

Here is where there is a problem. It is the absolute absence of manipulation that makes it distortion-free. You know like air.
You must be disappointed when you go to a live concert. Do you bring your own bag of distortion with you? Or wait for the CD version to come out and listen to it at home where the "proper" amount of distortion can be added.

I can't wrap my head around the idea that we need distortion in our playback systems.

Your amplifier circuit by itself (without adding distortion) apparently is making enough mistakes (errors) to warrant having to do something to hide or cover up whats happening.  

...applies some positive phase second order distortion through the NFB loop balance to warm the sound up and open up the stage.

Translation: without adding second order - the raw circuit is "cool " sounding and has a narrow or restricted sound stage. Yes?

...applies some positive phase second order distortion through the NFB loop balance to warm the sound up and open up the stage.

Translation: without adding second order - the raw circuit is "cool " sounding and has a narrow or restricted sound stage. Yes?

No.

Sorry my bad. So I guess that the raw circuit is fine by itself. Its just that if you want to make the sound even richer and fuller than the original recording - then you add the extra distortion. 

This also gives you the added bonus of listening to the performance on a larger or wider sound stage than the one they actually used for the recording?

Is it me?

@roger_paul 
You do know the more you talk the more you sound like you don't know what you're talking about, right? 
A variety of Pass push-pull circuits feature a pot to balance the ground of the input stage. By off balancing it a bit you get a warmer second order and it sounds better, because as pretty much all of us know, near-zero distortion amps sound cold and lifeless. A TON of amplifiers are designed with some ability to manipulate the modes of distortion. Unlike most, I know where mine is and how to do it. What's more, as I previously pointed out, the nature of dimension is distortion so it's reasonable to conclude that well chosen distortion can enhance or reduce that perception. Those of us in the know are well aware of the fact that distortion can be utilized as a tone control to an extent, too. Really good designers understand that carefully chose distortion is much better than no distortion. That, in a nutshell, sums up the entire philosophy of the single ended triode topology. 

"Here is where there is a problem. It is the absolute absence of manipulation that makes it distortion-free. You know like air." 
This is just a lie. Not only can you not furnish a measurement to justify that claim, you can't even provide a theory, circuit diagram, or patent. It's just a lie.
"I can't wrap my head around the idea that we need distortion in our playback systems."
You don't understand how a volume knob works. I'm not at all surprised you don't recognize the usefulness of distortion. 

As for my F5, it uses MOSFETs on the output stage and they're not the most linear devices in the universe. Big power JFETs are 10 times more linear. The F5 uses a good bit of negative feedback to achieve it's specs. Without it the damping factor is weak, the bandwidth is narrower, and the distortion is much higher. Big deal. I'm not ashamed of it. I don't think Nelson is ashamed of it. I don't consider it a bad thing. It's necessary for the voltage gain stage to drive the current gain stage accurately and it's implementation is carefully considered. You see, I recognize the impossibility of the lies you claim and I embrace artfully utilizing shortcomings. I emphasis "artfully" because art is what it is. The opposite of art would be science. And since you deny there's art to this, you must be in the science camp. But you're not really in the science camp because scientists measure things. You're just making it up!

So what now, Roger? You gonna take more of my words out of context to weakly mock them? Just keep running from the fact you've got bogus claims you've been called out on? Keep accusing me of being the measurements freak when it's you claiming perfection with ZERO proof? ZERO circuits. ZERO patents. ZERO actual theory. Your white paper reads like the mombo-jumbo on Geoff's Machina Dynamica snake oil page. It's not a technical piece of work. It lacks what defines a white paper; PROOF of the theory.