Not all distortion is created equal (saturation and harmonic distortion explained) 

Do you mean acoustic or sonic sense? Not sure how a Fourier transformation graph helps with musical sense

@@PetraKann I would say because of the subjective value we assign (as occidental listeners) to odd harmonics instead of even harmonics (more musical, or pleasant)

That's not how it works. Not all digital means odd harmonics & aggressive saturation. DSP can easily emulate asymmetrical distortion & even order harmonics. There are digital plugins for mixing software (such as Reaper) where you can choose between tube saturation, tape saturation, different types of clipping & so on. As for digital amps (such as Boss Katana or Peavey Vypr) you never really physically clip them (or you shouldn't at least). Their pipeline of creation of amplified sound is completely different from analog stuff, no physical clipping of components involved there. P.s. As for analog stuff, it does both types of distortion as well, symmetrical & asymmetrical. For example Tube screamer style pedal provides symmetrical clipping & more aggressive sound, while BOSS SD-1 has asymmetrical clipping & warmer sound. It's all goes down to specific circuitry in analog stuff & algorithms in digital.

THANK YOU FOR DOING THE LEGWORK FOR ME I knew it had to do with the literal HARMONIes produced but not the exact numbers/notes.

I always knew on my guitar if I play a minor second interval with heavy distortion it generates a very low bass note even playing notes high up the neck. I'm really interested in IMD

Could you explain?

Hey, there are in fact some metrics that try to account for masking. Dr. Earl Geddes talks about this in his talk with Erin: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-jnEGWFEGpmw.html The problem is, that masking is heavily affected by the sound pressure level of the signal. That's why you can't simply put a weighting filter on the harmonics and call it a day.

Das war nicht mein Ziel. 😅 Hoffe du konntest was lernen :)

Some distortion is inevitable, and clipping is an accident that happens to everyone. Some musicians/broadcasters like the warm, colored, tinny/resonating/faintly musical sound, called “vintage” or “analog,” that you got using old audio equipment. We’ve gotten so good at it that there’s very very little distortion happening to the sound waves as they are translated from air to electrical current (kind of miraculous, if you think about it.) The first electric audio equipment in 1906 was the Audion tube amplifier, which as Krause explains produces that round musical sound because the shape of the tube creates asymmetrical distortions in the sound wave. The Audion made live radio broadcasting possible. We still use tube amps, and they’re basically unchanged from their invention over a hundred years ago. They’re why all old-timey recorded music and speech sounds Like That. If you’ve listened to recordings of broadcasts and songs from the 1910s and especially 1920s onwards, you know what I mean. Everybody say thank you to Lee de Forest, who was financially exploited in return for his world-changing invention. He was also called the father of radio and the grandfather of television.

@@rinalubit True, some distortion is inevitable. I have grown with the industry, I've witnessed the development of ultra low distortion systems. That was the name of the game in the 50s, 60s, 70,s etc. I am familiar with the arguments for tube distortion, tape distortion etc., all to be AVOIDED. In my day (early 1960s) a distorted signal was not permitted. Nowadays, distortion is added to 'beef up' poorly recorded signals. Learn to record correctly and you won't need to rely on 'addons'.

Hey, haven't tested them yet. I hope to get my hands on them soon :)

Hey, I currently don't have one with all interfaces. I'll see if I can incorporate it in a future review.

Indeed, for some reason RTL is never published by manufacturers, yet it's very important for live performance.

I’ve noticed that RTL is a really big thing on the interfaces I’ve been seriously considering. Maybe that’s a more recent thing? I only started researching all this three weeks ago.

I would it's say it's more saturation than clipping. When the signal sent in to a transformer gets stronger, there comes a point where the core saturates with the magnetix flux. At this point the transformer starts to behave non-linear and adds symmetrical distortion. But because this disortion is not abrupt as in clipping but sets in gently until the core is fully saturated.

Hey, they are KEF iQ1. Sadly they don't make them anymore. Maybe you can find them used :)

Hey, all converters clip at some point, regardless if they are cheap or very expensive. Sometimes more expensive converters cheat a little by leaving a few dB of head room which allows for small overshoots of the signal. But that does not prevent the signal form clipping if it goes multiple dBs over the clipping threshold. Even 10000 $ gear has to obey the laws of physics.

@@JulianKrause That may be! And yet there will always be exceptional talents who achieve amazing things and stand out for their engineering skills. In a mastering tutorial by Robert Babicz I learned that the key to very loud but powerful and transparent masters lies in the quality of the converters and its clipping characteristics.

Hey, that was the low order saturation. You can also hear the clip at 5:55.

Yes

*MORE DISTORTION, MORE BETTER*

Ok, now I fully understand your comment ;) Cool video, it's as if we have planned it.

This is the video ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-so6cEdtYL00.html

Distortion will always affect sound equipment. Julian is just explaining that not all of them are the same and you can't rely on THD number to tell you everything about how the quality of the sound will be.

@@alexChook thanks. Whats THD, total harmonic distorsión?

@@JesusPiano yes