Aloha,

I've been pondering Keith Howard's interesting article and I think I've got my own answer:

There is such a thing as euphonic distortion - as evidenced by the positive subjective effects of those Musical Fidelity Tube Buffers that people like.

I have one, but I thought it took away detail in my system. It did "change" the sound, though. No DBT failure there.

It now awaits a trial in the computer system - I'm curious to see what it may do for a different set-up environment.

Anyway, if not "euphonic," I don't know what aficionados of this fun toy (yes, toy) would call that thing.

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More euphonic pontificating...

Besides being relatively hot and talented as a singer, Nikka Costa helps me understand euphonic distortion better - "Everybody's Got Their Something."

Yup, I know tha's right.

I have been here and there as an amateur audiohile, and found some things that pop up again and again; one of which is different people like different flavors of phase shifting.

I've seen I don't know how many "amazing new breakthroughs" that some guy in a white coat (remember him at CES?) will tell us about during a speaker demonstration, only to listen and hear that there are some different phase shift things he did to change the sound or soundstage.

So, I think the key to this euphonic distortion thing lies more in what's happening to phase at different places in the electronic audio spectrum that some people are prone to react to and like.

We see it readily in changes made to speakers, but it may be a more subtle thing that happens within the bowels (heh heh heh, I said, "Bowels") of certain pieces of gear that do something that is, in fact, a distortion of the original, but we like the effect.

Or, maybe it's the wine talking.

Doofus question: So, is there such a thing as a phase/frequency plot or anything like that for electronic gear?