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It seems we approach the requirements of an amp quite differently

Firstly the amplifiers have to be designed to be linear and implemented well enough to achieve it over some of their operating range when presented with the load of the desired speaker and the current required to achieve the desired listening levels.

Indeed. My tube amps meet those criterion quite well. Better in fact than an older, but very good SS amp I have.

At the cheap end, it tends to rule out amplifiers that cannot maintain linearity when driving real loudspeakers at realistic SPLs.

What are "realistic SPLs" to you? For me, that averages in the 70s and 80s with occasional peaks in the 90s. I am totally unconcerned as to how many PA bins my amp can drive. Here again, most amplifiers today meet your very basic requirements.

I can see, however, where that would be important to those professionals who work with auditorium or rock music sound reinforcement systems, often to ear bleeding levels.

Is this because the word fidelity does not mean to you simply a linear amplifier?

I already answered that question. Perhaps you might answer the question I posed to you in response. If you've forgotten, here it is again.

Which would you rather have - 1% pure second harmonic distortion or 0.1% seventh harmonic distortion?

Understanding that concept as morricab has more eloquently described goes to the heart of my answer.

Is the sole task of an amplifier to linearly increase the input signal? Or should it aim to do more such as sound musical?

Naturally. In the real world, however, there are only errors. Some errors are far more egregious than others. Musically consonant distortion (even at higher levels) is more musical than dissonant forms. Like cars? Take two samples with equal lateral cornering capability as measured on a skid pad. Would you prefer the one with a neutral handling state or one that exhibits snap oversteer? There are qualitative measures to performance that your simple approach ignores.

rw

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