Funniest snake oil theories

[cloudbuster]

You have a good point. I like the harmonic distortion in the bass, so I'd use it there, or a tube amp. I went with solid state on midrange and high end at very low distortion levels.

 

[indra1]

Blindly adding even harmonic distortion is not a good valve amplifier model.
Filtering first and mixing back in so that only bass gets distorted is more realistic and gets bass warmth without midrange muddle from intermodulation

It will depend on the speaker used. Correctly phased H2 on the signal will cancel some of H2 generated by the driver. But on a multiway with driver phase reversal (usually on the midband driver) the cancellation works on the bass driver but add more H2 to the midrange mucking up the sound. It takes a single driver speaker, a 6dB/octave multiway with no driver phase reversal or a multi amp system with LLXO to effectively use the H2 effect. Not really useful for the majority out there due to phase coherence requirement.

 

[MITsound]

The Late Entry

Nope, not a blue movie.
Apparently a new and different cable company will be coming to the market soon.
A Facebook post posits that companies have been unable to explain diamagnetic connectors and how they function. This inability to describe the function has held back release until now. Soon. Pretty quick.
I guess differently than variously sized conductors, insulation type, compressed conductors, ovoid or rectangular shaped conductors, or some other geometry.
Good thing too. It was getting boring monitoring the I can hear it shots being fired towards no you can't salvos. Now all will be explained.

 

[RussellKinder]

Looking at it now, I can see how the lower even harmonics would sound better than odd. The second lands on the octave above the fundamental and the 4th 2 octaves above. Start on C, both 2nd and 4th are C. The third is a G, not so bad, but the 5th hits at E, a minor third above C, undesirable distortion musically. The higher ones get quite dissonant.

This is what's known as the heart of the matter.

The bitch about harmonic distortion is IM distortion. The sum and difference frequencies you get with the first few even harmonics will likely hit within the musical scale where the higher ones will get real ugly.

IM products of harmonics all fall on harmonics. But this is why small amounts of feedback are bad. It generates IM products, but then it is not enough feedback to suppress them.

 

[cloudbuster]

IM products of harmonics all fall on harmonics. But this is why small amounts of feedback are bad. It generates IM products, but then it is not enough feedback to suppress them.

I haven't thought this through in a while. My understanding is that if the amplifier is non linear, sum and difference frequencies occur. With one note, they would all hit somewhere on the series, but with multiple notes, percussion sounds, non harmonic sources like bells, you get IM that lands outside the scale.

Do you advocate feedback when it's done properly?

 

[tomtt]

All is Revealed >

 

[wiseoldtech]

What I find amusing, yet utterly boring, is all the continual discussions throughout the web about the infinitesimal amounts of distortions, and how to remedy them.
You know, those levels so tiny that only a space alien creature might hear.


"But but!...... my oscilloscope can see it!

 

[Jim the Oldbie]

I've come to the conclusion that much of what I perceive initially as distortions (in the nonlinear sense) are merely frequency response aberrations in the upper treble register.

I recently bought a pair of Audio-Technica ATH-M40x headphones. Not nosebleed high-end, but not bargain bin either. They sound pretty damn good, except for what sounded like a bit of scratchiness waay up in the top register.

After plugging them into several different headphone jacks and hearing only minor variations in this "distortion," I finally connected them to something with a 10-band EQ, and pulled down the 16KHz band by 3 dB. Now they sound wonderful - the highs are silky smooth. The damn things were just too hot in the top end!

I wouldn't feel so dumb about this if not for the fact that I'd already learned the same lesson with my main home rig a couple of years ago, after not only hearing but measuring a sharp 2 dB bump at 10 Khz. What's the old saying: "Those who do not remember history..."

 

[wiseoldtech]

I've come to the conclusion that much of what I perceive initially as distortions (in the nonlinear sense) are merely frequency response aberrations in the upper treble register.

I recently bought a pair of Audio-Technica ATH-M40x headphones. Not nosebleed high-end, but not bargain bin either. They sound pretty damn good, except for what sounded like a bit of scratchiness waay up in the top register.

After plugging them into several different headphone jacks and hearing only minor variations in this "distortion," I finally connected them to something with a 10-band EQ, and pulled down the 16KHz band by 3 dB. Now they sound wonderful - the highs are silky smooth. The damn things were just too hot in the top end!

I wouldn't feel so dumb about this if not for the fact that I'd already learned the same lesson with my main home rig a couple of years ago, after not only hearing but measuring a sharp 2 dB bump at 10 Khz. What's the old saying: "Those who do not remember history..."

I've been thinking of getting the ATH-M20's, the reviews seem good on them.

 

[midrange]

C2, 65.406 based on equal tempered scale, A=440.

The relationships hold exactly if you use a non tempered scale. Start with the fundamental, times 2, times 3, etc. When you get to the g, it would be a perfect fifth, but with equal temperment, the note on the piano won't be exact. If you do it with a string, subdividing one half, third, and so on, it will be exact. The error is small. It was done so you could play in any key and be close enough.

Interestingly, if you go up from C (say) 7 octaves multiplying the frequency by 2 each time, you end up at C. If you go up by 12 fifths, multiplying by 3/2 each time you end up at the same note, (B#)

There is a discrepancy between the 2 of about 1/4 semitone. This difference is called a Pythagoran Comma

 

[mchambin]

What I find amusing, yet utterly boring, is all the continual discussions throughout the web about the infinitesimal amounts of distortions, and how to remedy them.
You know, those levels so tiny that only a space alien creature might hear.


"But but!...... my oscilloscope can see it!

Actually a sine wave with little ( measured ) distortion looks just like a....pure some wave.

Newbs publish such pictures to show how good their amplifiers are.

BTW, I think it is a waste of time to hunt for super duper low amplifiers distortion.

 

[poynton]

Especially when one factors in the distortion due to the loudspeaker.


.

 

[MITsound]

I guess an amplifier's distortion may be magnified by a speaker's much higher distortion though.

 

[wiseoldtech]

I guess an amplifier's distortion may be magnified by a speaker's much higher distortion though.

No so.


If the amp in question is providing a nice "clean" output, the speaker is now fed with it, and controlled by the amp.
Not backwards as you might think.

 

[mchambin]

Of course.
Unless one proves there is an interaction, THD from the amp and the speaker add in a quadratic way. Such an addition gives a result close to the larger distortion whenever they are of different magnitude.
Conclusion: The distortion of the amplifier is swamped by the one from the speaker.

 

[tomtt]

its bose.

snake oil,

or perfection.

or both

 

[lenjack]

There was a Rodrigues cartoon, decades ago, in Stereo Review, which featured a circus freak named Auro, "who could hear distortion, all the way down to 0.003%"

 

[wiseoldtech]

There was a Rodrigues cartoon, decades ago, in Stereo Review, which featured a circus freak named Auro, "who could hear distortion, all the way down to 0.003%"

Seems that there's a LOT of "Auro's" around these days.

 

[Evenharmonics]

It's easy to do. Just claim that he / she can.

 

[wiseoldtech]

The susceptable crowd buys McIntosh, just because... it's McIntosh.

I buy Technics... because it's much lower in distortion.