A distortion spec at the onset of clipping is pretty much worthless. A more useful number is the THD at 1W. This corresponds to a level you are more likely to listen to. Most amps are well under .1% at 1W. However, that simple number still tells you very little about how the amp sounds. You need to know more about the spectral content of the distortion to infer anything about the sonics.
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?
What the heck is going on? Wouldn't 100 watts at 0.3 percent sell better than 140 watts at 10 percent?