Resistor Sound Quality?

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Here is the cite for IM related to music. A very good read.
 

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Here is the cite for IM related to music. A very good read.

It's actually very short and can be found in its entirely online here:

http://linearaudio.nl/sites/linearaudio.net/files/langevin%20im%20in%20tape%20recorders.pdf

Regrettably it is so old that is full of errors. For example it says:

"Intermodulation distortion can only be created by mixing
two frequencies."

In fact Intermodulation distortion can be created whenever more than one frequency is present. Two frequencies is a simplistic example. In music the number of frequencies available to be intermodulated can be far larger.

This is hardly the end of its errors.

The concedes early on that sound effects create aharmonic IM. Music commonly contains percussive sounds that are similar to the example the paper contains.

Thus it is easy to conclude that using it as a proof text that even just modest amounts of low order distortion in audio amplifiers can in some sense be audibly tolerable is not warranted.

Got a paper that is relevant, valid and supports your claim?
 
The concedes early on that sound effects create aharmonic IM. Music commonly contains percussive sounds that are similar to the example the paper contains.

No such word as aharmonic and anharmonic has a very different meaning. Differentiating IM from THD is not accurately described as anharmonic.

Further examples of anharmonic oscillators include the large-angle pendulum, which exhibits chaotic behavior as a result of its anharmonicity; nonequilibrium semiconductors that possess a large hot carrier population, which exhibit nonlinear behaviors of various types related to the effective mass of the carriers; and ionospheric plasmas, which also exhibit nonlinear behavior based on the anharmonicity of the plasma.

There is also inharmonic in music, also not generated by amplifiers.
 
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Looks like the acolytes are getting nervous 😎

*Specially* because heresies are being uttered in public, at the heart of the Temple, straight at the Main Priest and Head Sorcerer, and nothing happens.

No Earthquakes, Tsunamis, nor bands of locusts covering the Sky, not even a cockroach invasion in the kitchen 😕

Although maybe present Mount Etna's eruption is a Punishment from the Sound Gods after all, we should check whether Catania's people, in the path of a full eruption, believe in "resistor sound" or not :headbash:, or how many frequencies are needed to create intermodulation 😱 :

etna-2015-12-09-07-13-44.jpg
 
Regrettably it is so old that is full of errors. For example it says:
"Intermodulation distortion can only be created by mixing two frequencies."

It's easy to create false statements by truncating a sentence. The complete sentence:

"Intermodulation distortion can only be created by mixing
two frequencies in a nonlinear system: a single frequency
will only produce harmonic distortion."
 
It's easy to create false statements by truncating a sentence. The complete sentence:

"Intermodulation distortion can only be created by mixing
two frequencies in a nonlinear system: a single frequency
will only produce harmonic distortion."

The first half of the statement is still false.

Adding a true statement to a false statement does not make both of them true.

I just isolated the true and false components of the statement and focused the reader's attention on the false part.
 
No such word as aharmonic and anharmonic has a very different meaning.

For being a non-existent word, aharmonic appears in the scientific literature quite a bit.

I agree that aharmonic and anharmonic are different words with different meanings, but they are related.

Differentiating IM from THD is not accurately described as anharmonic.

Since you introduced the word anharmonic to this discussion, any such error would be yours.

There is also inharmonic in music, also not generated by amplifiers.

Looks to me like a post full of deflections, based on nit-pickng over the meaning of words.
 
Intermodulation / harmonic distortion is just different view at the same non-linearity. The non-linearity is the case, not the way how we describe or depict it.

Absolutely!

If I want to shake people up I point out that IM and THD are not physical properties, but instead are ways of characterizing nonlinearity which is the basic physical property.

THD is sometimes defined as a means for characterizing nonlineariy, and in this usage its not as horrible as it can be in other roles.
 
I think 'two or more' would suffice

Agreed. If it were the only problem in the paper.

The paper seems to be based on the idea that people who use reproduction equipment can pick and choose which music they record and play, or at least it is cited by people who seem to want to give a pass to legacy technologies such as vacuum tube amplification and analog media (both tape and vinyl) that has audible nonlinear distortion.

To its credit, the paper can be interpreted to say that guitar music is far more tolerant of IM than percussive music.

A more accurate statement of the situation may be that amplifier and recorder nonlinear distortion is more tolerable when they are called on to reproduce one musical sound at a time and when that sound has a relatively simple harmonic structure.

Thus, the acceptability of the use of high distortion audio gear for reproducing solo string instruments such as guitars may be explained.

I've noticed that hi fi show demos of SET amplifiers and analog media is often based on recordings of solo instruments, and now this makes sense.
 
Careful there non-harmonics are not easily generated i.e. NOT related to F1, F2, etc.

They happen in nature, many musical instruments make them.

In general IM creates non-harmonics, and since every nonlinearity is a potential generator of IM...

BTW the pictures of vinyl flaws are posted and discussed here on a cyclical basis.

It seems like they haven't sunk in, yet.
 
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