• WARNING: Tube/Valve amplifiers use potentially LETHAL HIGH VOLTAGES.
    Building, troubleshooting and testing of these amplifiers should only be
    performed by someone who is thoroughly familiar with
    the safety precautions around high voltages.

300B with high harmonic distortion

"Driver" is the driver output to the grid of the 300B.
Are you sure, that measuring set is correct?
There is significant hum, which is spreads in the whole spectrum.

Try to measure with only shorted input soundcard (as reference), and later driver output (+ buffer for soundcard) with shorted input amplifier. Compare the two measurement.
Try to measure amplifier self noise (shorted input).
 
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No, it is a breadboard. I don't care about 60Hs and it's harmonics. Those can be adressed in the power supply design.

The power supply is a HP 6448B with a cap multiplier (FET) for the driver tube.

The breadboard will pick up radiated noise. Including 60HZ and harmonics.Skip the 60/120/180/240...hz noise.

Lets stay with THD and IMD for the output.
 

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The test of the test setup is always suggested as first step
In this circuit the input stage running fine so it can be skipped
If a good generator is available with 10 volt (p.e.) as signal to drive the input of power stage then it will possible to get the signal from anode of 300B ( with proper coupling cap and resistors attenuator)
the gain is around 3-4 times so it is a minimum to understand the thd shape

Walter
 
First plot - 76Vrms measured at the anode of the 300B, capacitively coupled to a resistor divider to the sound card.
Second plot - same conditions but measured at the load resistor on the transformer output.
 

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Try to measure with only shorted input soundcard (as reference), and later driver output (+ buffer for soundcard) with shorted input amplifier. Compare the two measurement.
Try to measure amplifier self noise (shorted input).
IMHO your measuring set (PC+soundcard) lies, the tremendous IMD products due to its.
If the self test (shorted input soundcard) FFT is correct, try to measure driver section.

Sample for comparison:
Breadboarded (CCS loaded 841, 10Y as CF) driver output at 70V RMS (on the grids of PSE 801a).
841(1)+10Y(11) 70V RMS.jpg
 
Sound-card loop-back.

I believe what you see is probably power supply harmonics, not IMD. Look closely at the 1KHz tone and the 60/120/180...Hz side-bands are very low indicating low IMD.
 

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"Internal Asus Strix Raid DLX"
... and PC switching supplies and bus noise.
It's can intermodulate signal components.
Try to kill all other applications when measurement is taking.

I use dedicated -old- laptop- for measurement and external soundcard.
For single tone measurement I use special (low noise) 1kHz and 10kHz clock (Victor's).
Sample: 1kHz external oscillator, EMU0404 USB measurement.

Victors 1k right.jpg

For soundcard measurement it's better than internal source.

Another good sine source is appropriate.
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...tor-for-thd-measurements.394993/#post-7258655