Quote Originally Posted by Arkless Electronics View Post
As you would expect, I disagree with all of that....

If Self said that (and I have all his books and most of his magazine articles but don't recall it) it would have been as a piss take as he is a "low distortion uber alles" designer. To add a control for 2nd harmonic distortion is actually easy but you won't find it on anything I make!

I guess the area I disagree most strongly on is that a hi fi system should be tailored to an individuals preferences... even by adding distortion etc! Ideally. all hi fi systems should sound identical. If they are distortionless and nether add nor remove anything from the source, ie a perfect hi fi system, then it is obvious that they will all sound the same.... obviously this would need them all to be used in rooms of ideal acoustics but it's something to aim for.

The whole idea of "tuning" a hi fi to have a particular sound is anathema to the very concept of hi fi, as I've said many times before. "The closest approach to the original; sound" as Quad famously said in their ads, is what we should be after and I don't even take anyone seriously who says they like/prefer a distorted or coloured sound, nor should anyone else. If that is "to be allowed" then just go ahead and add a graphic EQ, a fuzz box to spice up those metal records, maybe a reverb unit to make other stuff sound "more spacious", a flanger maybe? to make "space rock" sound more "spaced out"?

If 3 amplifiers have a genuine claim to being the 3 most perfect in current production then it should be pretty much impossible to tell them apart. Think about it. If non of them distorts anything or adds or takes away anything from the signal fed to them they will sound identical
I think that, not for the first time, you have got the wrong end of the stick with my post. Self did say that but the reason he said it was he was making the same point that you are - you can add distortion to taste but you shouldn't want to!

The reason I brought that up is to indicate that the right kind of distortion, in the right amounts, can subjectively improve the sound. And most enthusiasts are interested only in the sound they can subjectively perceive, not what makes it sound that way. They don't care a jot that it is not strictly high fidelity to the recording. However most would balk at the idea of an amp with user-variable distortion. That's a bridge too far. But hide the distortion in the format, and no problemo.