Sophie's Choice

[AdrianSD]

Distortion is not a scalar quantity. It is at least a vector.

That's pedantic

[AdrianSD]

No its not. Sometimes people talk about a distortion being enough gain or not for a specific style of music, or which one has more gain than the other, as if the character and texture of the gain were not important. The harmonic relationship between the clean sound and the distortion is everything to me, and it informs character and texture far beyond the perceived amount of distortion or gain.

I'm not debating the scientific aspect it here, including the empirical approach to measuring what, how and where in the signal chain, speaker type, placement and what not. From this very perspective I consider it pedantic, what some people consider average others label as intense and the other way around. Very often moving 2-3 feet sideways makes a fizzy distorted riff sound sweet and full. Of course from this perspective the amount of distortion is not a scalar, but there's so much involved in measuring it as vector that the whole discussion becomes too complex.
Oh wait, I sound pedantic...

[Aceman]

You are both being sophmoric.