The Yamaha HTR6240 on sale now at Futureshop claims THD of 0.9%. Can this be right? Other receivers in this price range are claiming THD of .08% there seems to be a ten fold difference in these specs. Am I mistaken or is this Yamaha receiver really near 1% THD, which would be a very high amount of total harmonic distortion for a receiver normally in the $450.00 range.
03-01-201012:22 PM - last edited on 03-01-201012:26 PM
It may be right but alas you can't judge audio quality by the numbers, these are almost meaningless regarding the quality of audio reproduction. And the 0.9% mark is used by Yamaha to boost the power specs. Never shop by the numbers but instead trust your own ears.
A similar priced Harman Kardon is 0.07% THD because it's limited to a more reasonable 50 watts per channel. A Samsung home-theater-in-a-box is 10% THD because they're overdriving it to try to get 200 watts per channel! Unfortunately Yamaha seems to be playing the power game by claiming 105 watts per channel, but something has to give in order to drive that much power through an amplifier of this class, and that is sound quality.
