I hope the following new perspective helps clarify a couple of points on the THD driver distortion front.
If we look at the whole audio chain from source to drivers and look at the audio signal as one continous signal does it really matter where the distortion occurs?
If the true and total accumulative THD of the signal was measured from source through to the output of the loudspeaker drivers, could we measure or hear if the distortion was all in the source, all in the amps or all in the speakers?
If the total system THD figure was say 3% could we tell if each component in the chain added 1% or was the source "perfect" and the amp a super clean 0.0007% so it had to be the fault of the speakers?
Why are some of the worst measuring digital sources (Zanden and most NOS DAC players) reviewed and acclaimed by buyers as the most natural and life-like sounding?
Ditto SET amplifiers and valve pre amps, many exhibit over 1% distortion in real load measurements yet they are again bought and treasured as the most natural sounding. How can they be even close to in performance terms, never mind the prefered choice over many of the "so low its basically zero" distortion amps?
My last question is do we actualy believe that if we replay the most perfect high resolution recording of a powerfull piece of music on a $Million system made up of a THD 0.5 % source, a THD 0.5% amplifiers and a THD 0.5% pair of speakers that our ears will agree and tell us "yes that is 98.5% indistinguishable and a 98.5% perfect reproduction of the live event?
No way on gods green earth!
With current technology, we are obviously a million miles away from being able to reproduce the power and complexity of real music.
My point is this; Our current obsessive "tunnel vision" with THD is focused on the wrong distortion. THD is Total HARMONIC Distortion we need to measure
Total Signal Integrity Distortion (TSID).
This is what I have been focussing on for the last 6 years.
I will make a seperate posting for more on the importance of Time coherence in the audio signal.
In summary current THD only measures amplitude and frequency errors ie THD is two dimensional!
Despite the smoke and mirrors marketing of conventional speaker manufacturers, the very pretty 3 D waterfall plots from speaker measurement software are still only 3D representations of a two dimensional event.
I hope this is of interest and helps further the debate.
"Time Will Tell"
All the best
Derek Wilson
Overkill Audio