Look! Its the dead horse brigade!!

Agreed. But they don't offer lab tests showing a benefit, just the pixie dust we can discount. If Sony sees that a lab tests says their product fails to deliver, they would pounce on the mag. Very different side of the coin.

Anywho...

Thats easy. Having spent 15 years doing high tech sales and marketing I can say with a great deal of authority that most marketers don't give a rats ass about the truth.

The reviewer writes " clipping at .016%..." and concludes with something like "great/powerful/delivering twice the value of..."

The marketer reads "Blah blah blah... we're the best". He immediately jumps up shouts out 'Hart of the dear! Heart of the dear!", runs over to his sales buddy VP and does that chest bumping thing football players do when they score a touchdown etc. Yes, I have seen VPs do this sort of thing.

He then shops off an extra wheelbarrow full of money to that magazine for the next 3 months for more advertising.

Its not about truth, its about winning and making money.

I can buy that. I still think after more than 10 years of reporting, someone would have said "hey, you are not using the word clip correctly, and implying our amp section is defective. Don't do that."

There is an answer to this question. I just don't have a acoustic engineering handbook at the ready.

Charles, I'll make one more comment: the "industry" does not use those absurdly low distortion figures as those which are present when an amplifier clips. Reviewers in some audio publications don't set a standard for audio engineers. Note also that Home Theater Magazine, which published the 3300 review, uses 0.1% and 1.0% distortion figures for measuring power output, without terming either "clipping".

If you studied the brief book excerpt that I linked, you noted that several % of THD was shown for degrees of flattening of the wave that still had a considerable way to go.

Agreed. Although, the sentence says it "begins clipping at .016 and reaches .01%..." I read it to mean each was a function of increased clipping, but you are right it could be read differently.

And I will get to the link you gave, and appreciate the reference material.