[Ardour-Users] a few thoughts

[Al Thompson]

On 12/04/2012 09:00 PM, Ross Johnson wrote:
>> Actually there is a difference in physics between digital distortion
>> and analog.  Analog distortion tends to add odd harmonics to the
>> signal, vs digital which tends to add even harmonics.  As humans we
>> tend to prefer the former vs the latter, which is why digital
>> distortion sounds so bad to us so quick.
>
>
> Don't you mean valve (predominantly even-order harmonics due to the
> softer saturation) versus transistor clipping (the result approaching
> a square wave is predominantly odd-order harmonics - a square wave is
> only composed of odd-order harmonics). Both are analog.
>
> Digital clipping is like transistor clipping. We prefer the even-order
> harmonics over the odd-order harmonics.

Digital clipping is like transistor clipping in that it sounds bad, but
it doesn't necessarily have a harmonic relationship, as the end result
is "overflow" and may end up being just about anything, and at levels
possibly far greater than the soft onset of distortion in the analog world.

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