Member
Joined 2009
Paid Member
I've found the opposite. The most disturbing issues in my system have come from speakers, not the amplifiers. I don't claim that all my amplifiers are great, some of them are certainly not low distortion. If you include uneven frequency response as a distortion then there's a lot of issues: irritating cone break up in the treble, fatiguing tweeters, poor high frequency dispersion, lumpy bass, cross-over affecting phase coherence, 'blurry sound' etc. etc. etc.
Heck I even find stereo a bit of a 'distortion' and find single speaker mono to be generally cleaner to listen to.
My observations may be unique to me, but I'd say that distortion is not really the major issue with music reproduction until you have everything else, especially your speakers, at a high standard. Nevertheless, I like making amps
Last edited:
The thing is, I've found, for me, that all the issues you mention as being disturbing in the treble area are really due to electrical misbehaviour. I've repeated the 'experiment' so many times, to me it's now obvious where the issues are - a pair of speakers will appear to have the problems you mention, but I ignore them - apart from making sure that the internal electricals of the speaker are in good shape - and improve everything else. Steadily when I do this I hear more of what's on the recording, and less of what the speaker is doing, especially in the sense of them doing something 'wrong' - until in the final step the speakers completely disappear sound-wise, they cease to exist as being part of the mechanism creating the sound, as far as my ears are concerned.
Unfortunately, many of the armchair "engineers" on these sorts of forums. Hence this thread. :-(
thanks - plenty more reading.
And some more!
I think and hope we are in agreement that
a) one number has been considered useless for a very long time
b) we keep moving forward in understanding our hearing and in building related models for "quality".
Three factors I can think of
- JAES (or IEEE) subscription is more expensive than browsing <insert favourite web site here>
- sometimes the art has difficult math, physics or physiology.
- vendors like to tell us LOUDLY why their product is so much better (regardless of the facts)
Last edited:
Would anyone on this forum who regards a single THD number as being a reliable guide to audio sound quality please declare themselves?thoglette said:
Just like magnetic monopoles for charge discretisation, it is important for the anti-THD brigade that there exists at least one person who sincerely believes in THD. If you don't exist, then their argument disappears. Please be brave and declare yourself. You will feel much better once you have come out.
Please support your local anti-THD charity. $5 will buy a THD wall-chart for them to throw darts at. $500 will buy them a distortion analyser which they can use as a door-stop. $20000 will buy them a high-end amplifier with high distortion and lumpy frequency response so they can enjoy music in the way they prefer.
Hi and thanks very much for the very interesting information
I wonder if audio design sector is still a market for Bruel & Kjaer, Agilent, Tektronix, etc. ... with more and more people relying on ears to evaluate equipment
If i were in B&K management i would be worried
No more distortion meters these days ... they are out of fashion
Kind regards, gino
I wonder if audio design sector is still a market for Bruel & Kjaer, Agilent, Tektronix, etc. ... with more and more people relying on ears to evaluate equipment
If i were in B&K management i would be worried
No more distortion meters these days ... they are out of fashion
Kind regards, gino
Last edited:
It's a pity that you deleted all the text around the actual statement to turn it from an interesting technical statement by a first-rate engineer into a bumper sticker parody.
Could someone please explain to me how it is that someone who says that 99% of what we need to know can be obtained from a 2-D set of THD measurements over a wide frequency and signal level range can be somehow (mis)represented as supporting the notion of a single number THD figure?
Personally I would want to quibble with the "99%"; I might want a slightly smaller number there - perhaps 95%? However, that might depend on whether the tests are 'black box' (as done for a magazine review) or 'white box' (part of debugging/developing a new design). White box testing can be augmented by circuit analysis and synthesis.
Personally I would want to quibble with the "99%"; I might want a slightly smaller number there - perhaps 95%? However, that might depend on whether the tests are 'black box' (as done for a magazine review) or 'white box' (part of debugging/developing a new design). White box testing can be augmented by circuit analysis and synthesis.
Carelessness, non-understanding, dishonesty, or a combination. Groner has done definitive and detailed work on distortion- I am, frankly, appalled at how his statements have been misrepresented.
Doppler Distortion in loudspeakers for a great discussion of the effects and the ways to measure them.
Sy, I had 30 seconds to find something interesting ON THIS FORUM. (Without naming names or fighting known trolls - strangely I save thoughtful posts, not thoughtless ones)
Back on track-
Note the key word - "single tone". A slip of the keyboard perhaps but that's what it said. Best practice is multi tone due to instrumentation limitations.
I also particularly picked that quote because the additional information (that I left out) DID NOT say to weight any particular measurement above any other. (And because I have no particular interest in The Author.)
Specifically, reading that particular complete post in isolation is likely to lead a reader to weight all measurements equally. IE - to presume all distortion is fungible - ergo all that matters is some aggregated THD number.
It is also quite possible that what I've interpreted from the that post is at odds with The Author's normal or more nuanced position.
However, just like my post which prompted you to respond, it says what it says - regardless of what was intended.
(As an aside, and based solely on my positive experience with you opinions, I will have a further read through The Author's other posts.)
Coming back to my original and main point from two sides
a) the existence of the thread (at all) indicates that the neither the definition nor relevance of "distortion" are generally agreed.
b) it's a rare person who will admit to being driven by their biases - especially the slightly irrational ones. (I've got mine!)
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.