I'm not at all befuddled by George. He's looking at amps that overshoot and have horrible low level distortion characteristics, just like I am, and is rightly calling that a bunch of crap. JA wouldn't call any other kind of amp "good" if it had that much overshoot or low level distortion apart from some tube amps. I read the review on that Cary with the 1% distortion at 3 watts. That was a VERY forgiving review in my estimation, and the listening evaluation made it abundantly clear that the thing was most definitely acting as a tone control of sorts and departed wildly from neutral. It's ONLY saving grace is that it was entirely second order distortion. That's not what class D amps are doing. They're making a complicated .05% distortion at a fraction of a watt.
The nature of the market place makes it obvious that true high fidelity isn't what sells. Nobody is standing in the isle of a Best Buy listening for harshness on that $400 pair of Klipsch. Most people LIKE punchy, sterile sound with insanely overblown bass that sounds extremely loud on account of the distortion.
I'm much more concerned with .05% distortion at .5 watts than I am with .005% at 150 watts. For my listening, nothing going on at those levels of power make any difference. Unless you're listening to 82dB/W/M speakers at 20 feet, those levels of power don't make any difference to you either.
The nature of the market place makes it obvious that true high fidelity isn't what sells. Nobody is standing in the isle of a Best Buy listening for harshness on that $400 pair of Klipsch. Most people LIKE punchy, sterile sound with insanely overblown bass that sounds extremely loud on account of the distortion.
I'm much more concerned with .05% distortion at .5 watts than I am with .005% at 150 watts. For my listening, nothing going on at those levels of power make any difference. Unless you're listening to 82dB/W/M speakers at 20 feet, those levels of power don't make any difference to you either.