Your brain interprets distortion as volume. It can be any distortion coming from the system or the room. You have work to do.
@russ69 , Hold on Tex, you are forgetting about Crown and Phase Linear. They were the first to make amps over 100 watts. The Crown sounded like finger nails down a chalk board. The Phase Linear like to blow up if you tried to drive the wrong speaker with it. The semiconductors of the day could not handle the heat and the Phase had pathetic heat sinks. But, it sounded 1/2 way decent and it did not clip into large Advents at 100 dB or so. Both amps had these large fancy face plates but were only a few inches deep. They may have weighed 5 lb at the most. As compared to the Parasound JC 1 at 65 lb, serious light weights and the JC 1 is a relatively light amp! The big Boulders weigh over 300 lb most of it CNC milled Aluminum of no sonic significance what so ever not to mention fugly to my eye.
@russ69 , Hold on Tex, you are forgetting about Crown and Phase Linear. They were the first to make amps over 100 watts. The Crown sounded like finger nails down a chalk board. The Phase Linear like to blow up if you tried to drive the wrong speaker with it. The semiconductors of the day could not handle the heat and the Phase had pathetic heat sinks. But, it sounded 1/2 way decent and it did not clip into large Advents at 100 dB or so. Both amps had these large fancy face plates but were only a few inches deep. They may have weighed 5 lb at the most. As compared to the Parasound JC 1 at 65 lb, serious light weights and the JC 1 is a relatively light amp! The big Boulders weigh over 300 lb most of it CNC milled Aluminum of no sonic significance what so ever not to mention fugly to my eye.