Nick's Picks, please note that in that Pinboard discussion, the claims about distortion were made by Erik Sikkema, not anyone from Neumann. Erik is someone I know from both the Neumann Pinboard and from Klaus Heyne's forum; he's a smart fellow and a very good recording engineer from what I can gather; he also has strong opinions which he likes to state as if they were established facts which merely require sufficient repetition. This should perhaps be taken into account when reading his messages--otherwise you might think that you'd missed reading a few years' worth of AES Journals.
For example, Erik is thoroughly convinced that phantom powering is the cause of many ills in today's microphones. (It is true that it places certain limitations on the design of microphone circuits, but whether designers have been able to do well within those limits is another question entirely.) And to his credit, Erik has gone farther than most people do who have such theories--he has actually had some of his microphones rebuilt so that the powering is carried on a separate wire in the cable. He claims that those microphones sound clearly better than the stock models. Sitting here on the other side of the world I can hardly dispute what he hears over there--but I can say for certain that his explanations make very little sense and don't fit the known, basic facts; also, that he changed other variables in the equation beyond the manner in which powering is delivered, such that the comparison became apples vs. oranges. (And we all know how that lawsuit came out.)
Now just because someone's explanation doesn't make sense to me, doesn't mean that they're not hearing what they say they're hearing, so that's all the farther I can take the matter. But my point is, Mr. Schneider (the moderator of the Neumann "Pinboard" or forum) is unfailingly polite, and would almost never contradict someone outright or risk embarrassing them (or himself or his company) by behavior that was anything less than gracious. (He has also replied to people in, at last count, four different languages, and made sense in all of them.) As a result, when someone posts an opinion with which he doesn't necessarily agree, most often his rejoinder (if any) will be quite indirect. You can see that happening in this thread; the person being "not exactly agreed with" may not even notice the lack of agreement, his expression of it is so mild.
--best regards