Some audiophiles (SET lovers) find this perfect signal reproduction not as appealing as SETs, in other words these audiophiles (myself included) LIKE the audible second order distortion introduced by SETs, as well as the non-flat frequency curves. To these people, regular equipment (which is perfectly well engineered) begins to sound "thin" or "metallic" becuase it lacks the "richness" and "naturalness" of SETs.

Now extend this thought to analog sound versus digital sound (digital sound offers far more signal fidelity than home analog reproduction). Same logic. Some audiophiles (not me) actually PREFER the audible distortions introduced by analog reporoduction.

Are all these audiophiles delusional? Not at all! They prefer something that is not true to the original, and that's fine! I don't really care that my 45 SET amp stinks in terms of measurements, or that an engineer who designed and built it today for any mass market company would be fired on the spot...i still love listening to it in the upper bass - midrange-lower treble.

But to expect all the engineers of this world to start deliberately introducing distortion and uneven freq curves just becuase a few of us like it is unreasonable, don't you think? And criticizing the equipment they make is also somewhat unfair, since all they are doing is designing perfectly competent amps & digital sources for as low a cost as possible. And finally, expecting everyone to have the same preference as I do or you do may also be somewhat unreasonable, since we all differ in our likes.

SO bottom line, it's probably wise to just chill out, spend less time wondering why the heck the rest of the world can't enjoy the same distortions & aberrations we do, and just enjoy the music.

Don't you think?
-akhilesh