For low distortion in a transistor common emitter transitor circuit, keep the output voltage well away from the supply voltage and use plenty of negative feedback by using an unbypassed emitter resistor or other ways. I attach a sim of a transitor producing about 40 percent distortion!
With the emitter resistor unbypassed, the distortion is only (!) 3%. The distortion is lower at lower levels.
Does the opposite case apply to MOSFETs? In our examples, we always had the MOSFET in saturation mode because the triode mode had an exponential I-V characteristic that distorted the signal--whereas saturation was mostly linear. Is this part correct?
I have seen Mosfets and Jfets as linear resistors in the saturation mode where there isn't a DC supply and the signal across them is 100mV or less. Usually they are used in their active triode mode with plenty of negative feedback to reduce distortion. :lol: