Do distortion 's affect enjoyment of speaker?

My take was the kind of thing (distortion) that would fatigue or even hurt your ears or damage your speakers! Not acceptable in my book. The measuring kind or inaudible kind I could care less about.

Everyone should notice quite a bit of distortion at higher volumes, no? Well, guess what? That distortion is not coming from your speakers. Who's laughing now?

the answer is an EMPHATIC 'yes'!
* distortions in the electronics ruins your listening pleasure thru the speakers..
* distortions in the speaker itself ruins your listening pleasure thru those speakers.
* distortions caused by the room ruins your listening pleasure thru the speakers.
* distortions caused by mechanical feedback of sound coupling back to your audio rack ruins your listening pleasure thru the speakers.
* distortions in the AC power in your wall outlet ruins your listening pleasure thru the speakers.

each of the above 5 items is a WHOLE lengthy chapter to improving playback sonics in the home environment that takes a long time to understand & a long time to master.

Which distortion(s) are your referring to??

I would add the following:

Imagine your amp to have a certain type of distortion. Perhaps it adds a graininess to the sound.

If you send it a signal that is also grainy-sounding, then the amp's graininess will not ADD to the graininess in the signal, but will MULTIPLY it. You are thus hearing DISTORTED DISTORTION, which is really bad.

This is why we recommend your best cables be placed at the source. There are far too many cables out there having a 'grungy' (dirty) sound that most of us would attribute to poor digital reproduction.

By using a cleaner/better cable at the beginning, everything downstream breathes more easily, since all are receiving less distortion to then re-distort.

I think that avoiding 'distortion multiplication' is part of the synergy reported for certain combinations of gear, speakers, and cables.

Best,
Roy

Thanks all. The "adjudicators" here modified my question; losing clarity. I just read that Rockport's new speakers have approx minus 60 db distortion--they claim is lowest in industry. B&W have advertised 1% distortion. I don't know how to interpret this; and how meaningful is the difference?