Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions THD?

I recently purchased a pair of m22ti's, as many of you know. My question now is, would these speakers be a better match with a Pioneer vsx-912 receiver than my Yamaha htr-5280? I noticed that the Pioneer has a high THD spec. What does this mean anyway? Do Pioneers distort more than Yamaha receivers? Please discuss.

THD is total harmonic distortion. you will probbly most likely notice it as a hiss when no music is playing coming through the speakers. Depending on how bad it is, it can ruin a movie's soft scenes. My old reciever had a average THD for recievers and i always hated the hiss. Now my NAD is dead quiet except if you put your ear directly on the tweeter you can hear a very soft hiss. I think yamaha generally makes pretty decent recievers and personally, i would stick with it. Or go to something like an onkyo or denon.

And especially with a speaker like the axioms with their detail and show it all sound you will probbly notice the higher THD more if its alot higher.

What's the numeric difference? If it's .08% vs .05%, I doubt you will notice a difference. Then again, I haven't really paid attention to it when listening to different receivers, and I did buy a receiver with .06% or .05% THD on purpose.

Ken

The THD and S/N specs (and even the rated power output) published by manufacturers are virtually useless in comparing receivers/amps from different brands. Not that the manufacturers are lying in these specs, but there are so many qualifications and methodological details (which they never publish in sufficient details anyway) that can grossly affect the final numbers. If you want to be anal about the specs, try to find third-party measured specs, preferably published by the same party using the same basic methods/qualifications.

There's generally no need to worry whether a receiver will "match" a speaker unless it's underpowered. Unless there's some feature that you want, there's no reason to believe that the 912 would be an improvement over your 5280. So far as the distortion figures, the advertised numbers(even if measured uniformly)have little or no significance. The audibility of THD varies with what the listening material is, but in general it has to get over 1.0% before it begins to become audible on music. These differences of a tiny fraction of a percent are meaningless.