Pre-Ignition / Knock...

Your logic is good, and thinking is smart.
There are other methods of determining engine performance, and detonation kills performance.

I started with a DynoRad, and a dash-mounted,dial-back, timing box.
The DynoRad is an accelerometer in a tach-like housing. You input yur weight and hit the gas and when yur done it has logged your distance to time, converted it to power, and amassed it into a sequential list for you to transfer to graph-paper. Then you make a change to the tune and run it again. And build yur new curve. Compare better or worse, and make a new plan.
The G-techPro does a similar job and you don't have to do the graphing.
The instant you lose power, you gotta ask "what happened?"
Yur butt-dyno will not tell the difference of 2 or 3 degrees short of optimum, but the engine will sure complain about 1 degree too much. Point is; sneak up on it.