John Siau is saying nothing except that amp distortions can rise to a dB level consistent with home appliance noise, when using otherwise excellent equipment. Does anyone here think he meant that the distortion will sound like a washing machine?
The point is, what is the point then? The fact is, we can all hear our washing machines loud and clear anywhere in a small to medium size room/house (say 2000 sq.ft), but we can't hear the Parasound A21+ amp's noise except listening to close to reference level during the quiet to almost completely silent passages such as in between movements in a violin concerto? So, okay he's right in saying what he's saying, but there's not much point saying it when it actually have the outside chance of misleading people, again not someone like you who are obviously very experienced and knowledgeable in the related topics.
Perhaps the best thing to do is audition one of his AHB2 amps and listen for ourselves instead of being so critical of his presentation – a presentation attempt meant for audiophile consumption.
I have to respectfully disagree, audiophiles likely wouldn't care as lots of them, even the majority I would guess, usually just go by what they thought they heard, without thinking much about Oh, I heard the snake hiss that ADTG talked bout, every time there's a momentary peak pushing near 105 dB SPL in the contents I listened to.
Also, I don't think anyone (that is anyone who under the basic related/applicable theories and principles..) need to his AHB2 amp to appreciate how quiet/silent that amp would be when used for even listening to pure tones at well below it's clipping level.
Benchmark’s AHB2 amps hit all the real audio checkboxes, in a small efficient form. If you don’t like what you hear through it, you don’t like the source recording or something in the chain before or after the AHB2 amp.
I am not sure it you think anyone would disagree with you on this lol..
The comparison is amp to amp. The topic is "Amplifier distortions - what, and how much are audible". We are still measuring things that matter less, and avoiding measuring things that matter more.
Totally agreed, I wish there are good ways to measure the audibility of different audible sound quality due to different recording/mastering quality in quantifiable ways, but even in subjective ways would be nice. I don't want them to stop measuring SINAD, but when we are dealing with the kind of amps JS mentioned in the video, the quality of recording/mastering will, imo have much more audible effects as related to enjoyability.
This is getting more interesting than worrying about phase, so I hope you are not ready to revert to "I am done on this topic"
By the way, I too, am a believer in the AHB2 being among the best in terms of transparency, especially if two are used for 2 channel stereo in bridge mode. My own wish is if he would do a better job on slew rate in the upcoming version, I have no doubt the specified slew rate as it is now is more than high enough, but it is far from SOTA, yet it's specified SINAD is definitely SOTA, second or third to may be a few class D amps (based on measurements found on ASR, or probably Stereophile, or SoundStage Hifi too but not sure.