Hifi, why bother?

[Diabolical Artificer]

".... front panel control which you could label "Niceness",..." That made me chuckle. To be honest I was playing the Devils advocate a bit here but was also intrigued the results of recent experimentation. Obviously hifi is such a subjective issue is there's right way and wrong way and as Mark points out fads and manipulation by hifi product sellers and manufacturers all have a very large part to play.

A guitar amp on the whole is designed to sculpt the sound amongst other things but if you try and play music though it it sounds aweful, same if you plug your bass or Gibson into your hifi.

I like the idea of a feature or black box that adds distortion in an amp, as Mark has also pointed out this sort of thing is done in the recording studio and it's feature of a lot PC music players where you can select EQ settings like "pop" & "rock" etc. If I did design such a device, sold it and it became popular, dare say it would be ripped off and sold more cheaply by the Chinese within months, so, there's no fortune to be made there.

Hifi and listening to music is a personnel thing, as you've said, Trevor is happy with his 3-3 and Albert with his Williamson. My daughter prefers her Iphone and earwigs to Dad's daft amplifiers and gurt big speakers. Refrains of "but this is how music should sound sweatheart, have a listen to this" is met with indifference.

Whilst on the subject of hifi and the sometimes amusing doings of audiophiliacs, I occasionally watch this chap, Steve Gutternburg on Utube and was gobsmacked at this recent video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45TfTvZLoao ,the chap not only built his hifi but also the room it lived in, now that's passion.

Still, I'm on a mission to boldly go where a lot of people have been before and don't really care what an amplifier sounds like at the end, it's the process of fettling the thing I enjoy, the brain work involved in circuit design coupled with hands on fabrication of chassis and the OCD neatness of wiring and layout.

Happy electron mafungerlyulation all, Andy.

[Amie]

Maybe a few like minded people who are prepared to ignore specifications, could start a new movement in audio, based solely on listening pleasure.

An absurd rhetorical device.

Already done, I'm afraid.

I know! I was being facetious. But as it's being discussed, the point is that its a very personal thing, a persons preference of how they enjoy music, so how is it that its a big business? Do people enjoy being told what to like? And then expect to have to pay for the pleasure of somebody providing it?

I don't understand!

Back to the practice Amp, with its deliberately distorted output feeding a speaker that probably spent the first twenty years of its life stapled inside some crummy TV, I wonder if some good studio equipment could recreate it   

Thanks.
Amie.

[ppppenguin]

The whole point of a guitar amp and speaker is that they are part of the instrument. Fidelity is irrelevant.

"But I never did care for the music much, it's the High Fi-del-i-ty!"

[BusyBee]

In my opinion Lou Reed took it to a striking conclusion many moons ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIMSbKU2oZM

Tracy

[colly0410]

Read somewhere that even order harmonic distortion can add a fullness & a sort of harmony effect a bit like double tracking & people usually like the sound. Odd order harmonic distortion gives a harshness/brashness to the sound that most people don't like. Class A usually gives a nice even order Harmonic distortion, whereas a badly designed class B can give an odd order one. It also mentioned that cross over distortion in class B was often mistaken for odd order harmonic distortion & was called 'the transistor sound.'

[Craig]

Even order harmonics are octaves above the fundamental, and are clearly consonant irrespective of musical key.

Odd order harmonics really depend on the order.

3rd, 6th, 12th and 24th harmonics are a perfect fifth with an imperceptible error of 2 cents. This interval occurs in all major and minor keys and is a stable consonant. So third order distortion has an unfair bum wrap.

Other distortion orders have perceptible frequency errors, and have musical intervals that may or may not be in a key, although they may be used as a accidental to add dissonant colour to a piece of music. It is those orders that add perceived harshness. But definitely not 3rd order.

Craig

[BusyBee]

All the musical theory does obviously have bearing but I can find it confusing. The 11ths 13ths etc with more complex chords which sound really good when correctly used. I suppose one thing to consider is that the even square wave is a combination of even harmonics and the uneven (period wise) combines odd harmonics. Soundwise though neither sounds totally distorted.

Take a guitar with one string a few hertz out. It is obviously frequencies and mixing but the intermodulation of non obviously related frequencies is what created the harshness. With pure tones the waveform clipping needs to be high and maybe over a stage or two to create a similar effect to which intermodulation would produce at fairly low levels of distortion. I just thought that out but it seems sensible to me.

Tracy

[Diabolical Artificer]

"All the musical theory does obviously have bearing but I can find it confusing" Your not the only one, that's why we have ears stuck on the outside of our brainbox, after wrestling with music theory for five hours we can just use our ears to see if it sounds good. I suppose it's not the individual harmonic content of a black box that matters, but their relationship to each other, sum of the parts an all that.

Andy.

[BusyBee]

I have just looked at my last post this morning and realised my electronic theory is somewhat out lol. A regular square wave is defined in odd harmonics, although at defined amplitudes. It's the non regular in which even harmonics come into play. It does make things easier though as a regular square wave, although sounding harsher than a sine wave, is not nasty and muddy (or perhaps dischordant    ).

Tracy

[ppppenguin]

Tracy, I looked at your previous post about square waves and wondered if you'd been getting too much sun. A symmetrical square wave is the sum of all odd harmonics. 1/3 of the 3rd, 1/5 of the 5th etc. The wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_wave is rather mathematical but the expansion of the sum with 4/PI etc here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_wav...r_analysis is clear.

There's a good animation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_wav...e_wave.gif

In the real world, for the most part, square waves aren't degraded just by leaving out harmonics. There's also phase shift with frequency which gives you the typical rounded corners and/or overshoot and ringing.