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Ten Percent Distortion?

I have a little Panasonic SA-XR25 digital receiver for my TV rig (I can't really call it HT). Driving some good speakers it sounds great, and cost me all of $287. Tonight I was killing some time wandering around the Best Buy shop looking at similar electronics from Panasonic, and others, and I noticed that output power was quoted at 10 percent distortion! At first I thought this was a missprint, surely they meant 1 percent or even 0.1 percent. However several units, from several manufacturers, were described this way. Back home I quickly checked the SA-XR25 spec and was reassured to find a reasonable 0.3 percent stated.

What the heck is going on? Wouldn't 100 watts at 0.3 percent sell better than 140 watts at 10 percent?
eldartford

Showing 3 responses by eldartford

eldartford OP
4,262 posts
 
Actually, I think that "10 percent distortion" would turn off even the most nonaudiophillic people. Everyone knows what "distortion" means, but plenty of audiophiles don't understand watts.
eldartford OP
4,262 posts
 
Twl....Maybe it's because I've been around so long that distortion is of interest to me. When I started out, harmonic and IM distortion in even the best amps were both over one percent. Technical improvements have made numbers on the order of a few tenths commonplace, and this is the big advance that I see in audio amps. Sure, distortion specs are not the whole story, but (IMHO) an amp that starts out with more than 1 percent distortion has two strikes against it.

Pragmatist...Most amps exhibit an abrupt increase in distortion at some power level (a "knee" in the curve), and you don't gain much more power by citing a higher distortion level.
eldartford OP
4,262 posts
 
It is useful to know how much power an amp is good for, bcause your speakers or type of listening may require a certain amount of power. Of course it doesn't tell you how the amp will sound, but it does help select amps for further consideration.

I am truly surprised that the stated distortion level is of such little interest. For the appropriate application I would buy an amp with relatively low power (20 watts used to serve me well in my tube days), but I would never even consider one with a distortion spec of 10 percent. How do I know that this represents the onset of clipping?
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