My understanding is that it is due to the lower voltage drop across the base junction. Germanium is .3v vs Silicon .7v, so with germanium you get less "crossov

My understanding is that it is due to the lower voltage drop across the base junction. Germanium is .3v vs Silicon .7v, so with germanium you get less "crossover distortion" when the input signal is crossing the 0 line. edit: I understand that typically this is biased out with diodes...but the matching is not perfect and it is easier to start with half the distortion.