There are class D amps that are much better at that than SETs due to a lower noise floor (class D amps are immune to 0V crossing distortions). He sounds (if your translation is correct) as if he thinks other amps have a characteristic that 'gates' the signal, as if signals below a certain level are not amplified. Its utter rubbish, purified bunk. There are amps that aren't as good at low level detail since distortion is masking it. This is all about a good first Watt.
This statement is highly misleading since its incomplete about my claims.I outlined far more than just 2nd and 3rd harmonic distortion. Since that is being ignored here I'm going to repeat myself and add more content.
SETs can't sound natural because of their high distortion (causing the sound to be warmer than the actual signal) but also because higher ordered harmonics causes them to sound more 'dynamic' than the actual signal itself which is unnatural. In addition, bandwidth is unavoidably limited causing them to sound anemic in the bass which is unnatural. Phase shift caused by limited bandwidth with no feedback to correct it causes colorations at the bandwidth extremes. The rise time is very slow (often less than 10V/usec), causing the amp to actually sound slow compared to the actual signal. Speed is important as the brain has tipping points, so when its too slow the music processing moves to the cerebral cortex rather than being processed by the limbic centers as in real life. Hum and noise is a problem since you need high efficiency speakers to really take advantage of what SETs do right. Output impedance is high, so most speakers simply cannot be used with them not only because they might lack the efficiency but also because tonal aberrations will result.
SETs are Power Paradigm technology like any zero feedback tube amplifier and so will attempt to make constant power with respect to the load impedance rather than constant Voltage (IME no zero feedback tube amp succeeds in this). This isn't a fault so much as something you have to be aware of when choosing a speaker as this limits the speaker choices enormously. As a general rule of thumb its a good idea to ask the designer of the speaker what sort of amp is recommended for the speaker. Fortunately the brain pays more attention to tonality generated by distortion rather than that caused by actual FR errors but this still crops up! Many modern speakers are rated '8 Ohm compatible' but are really 4 Ohms in the bass. Zero feedback tube amps will sound bass shy on such speakers; move the speaker cable to the four Ohm tap and it gets better but now the mids and highs aren't right. A proper Power Paradigm loudspeaker will thus have controls on the back for the midrange and high frequency drivers to allow you to set the speaker to match the Voltage response of the amplifier. If you have a vintage JBL, Altec, EV and the like you've seen these controls. IOW Zero feedback tube amps are not plug and play with respect to speakers.
What SETs do right: the lower ordered harmonics very easily mask higher orders which is important as they make more higher ordered harmonic distortion than any other kind of topology. That's why they sound nice and smooth despite the large amount of higher ordered harmonic distortion compared to other kinds of amps. Distortion vs frequency is a ruler flat line across the audio band and this is IMO is far more important than THD, which I think we all agree is highly misleading if stated by itself (since it tells you nothing about how the amp will sound). Quite literally this is why SETs are around, why tubes are still around; solid state amps have been terrible at this since their inception. Fortunatly there's a way out of that problem for solid state, but it appears that right now there aren't that many solid state designers that understand how important distortion vs frequency really is, so most solid state amps today still sound lifeless, boring and/or bright.
I answered the above question (higlighted) earlier but again: You need a recording you made so you know. You don't have to produce an LP or CD, the master (especially if digital) is all you need. Contact a local group that plays in a decent venue that you know (for me this was O'Shaunnassy Auditorium on the campus of St. Catherine's College in St. Paul) and see if they will let you record. Recording equipment these days isn't expensive relative to the kind of money people shell out for a decent SET. When I started doing on-location recordings really good mics required me to take out a bank loan. Now you can get into good large diaphragm condensor mics for a few hundred dollars! To me this is a no-brainer.
The dictionary definition is the one I use. To your first paragraph, I regard the italics of the statement above as requires no conclusion as it is a conclusion and not a proposition. The means to convince is that you have to understand that no-one uses a direct microphone feed to play music; everyone uses recordings. So being accurate, being true to the recording is the only access to the system sounding natural. If the system somehow sounds natural and the recording is not, that's just wrong!
No. It started because I said that SETs don't work because they are incapable of sounding natural because they are not accurate; explaination repeated above.
It is- you are correct! I may have spent too much time playing in an orchestra. I can enjoy systems that lack the bottom octave but that isn't the same as saying that they sound natural as they are not accurate. I want it to be convincing.
In case its not clear, I don't regard a solid state amp that has 0.001% distortion but sounds 'boring and sometimes offensive' as being either accurate or natural. Unless the recording itself is 'boring and sometimes offensive' then the amp is simply wrong, probably because the designer didn't understand the importance of preventing distortion rising with frequency- something that any SET owner understands innately if not conciously.
Neither do I, just for the record.
