Having had my new SET amplifier (Music Reference EM7) running on and off for the past four days, I was discussing impressions with my wife this evening. I noted we'd been playing music at louder volumes than previously (when I had been using a solid state amplifier). My wife smirked, and commented that it was Father's Day - apparently she was indulging me. The interesting thing is that the first complaints about the volume usually come from my five year old son. Yet, there had been no complaints from him at all over the past four days.
So, what is the likely reason for my son's sudden tolerance of louder music? I doubt that he's spontaneously discovered the maturity to endure a little discomfort for the benefit of others, or that he has been as indulgent as my wife claims to have been with my new toy. I presume that it has something to do with the sound.
I wonder whether this has something to do with the differences between the types of harmonic distortion produced by tube and solid state amps. I've often read that solid state amplifiers tend to produce odd-ordered harmonic distortion, which has a greater tendency to sound "unpleasant", while the tube amplifier's sins are in even-ordered harmonics, and these tend to be less disturbing. As far as I understand things, these "orders" of distortion are essentially just the introduction of specific overtones or harmonics on top of a fundamental wave. As these overtones are naturally of higher frequencies, wouldn't it make sense that a five year old would be more sensitive to the variation between odd- and even-ordered harmonic distortion?
Or is the likely explanation of this phenomenon simply that the new amplifier sounds much better than the old one?
Chad
