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Deliberate distortion in music. Any harm?

jhoak

jhoak

Super Member
I was listening to the local FM station and they just played American Woman by Lenny Kravitz. Towards the end of the song there is a LOT of distortion applied to the vocals. I can’t say that I especially appreciate it but I understand. “Artistic License”… Yea OK whatever. :rolleyes:

But it raises the question… Am I putting any of my equipment and in particular my speakers at risk by playing music with lots of “engineered in” distortion? :scratch2:
 
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I like the song but I have to say that I enjoy the version by The Guess Who a whole LOT more.

Of course being well past 50 I guess that would be expected. ;)
 
Plenty of electric guitars were recorded this way. I like the effect in some works but hate it in others. Not harmful.(i.e. not the same as clipping your amplifier)
 
I recently picked up a Jimi Hendrix boxed set on vinyl. He was a big user of various distortion and feedback effects. That's actually where I started thinking about the question.

There were a few times where I was cranking it out pretty loud and had to ask myself if the distortion I was hearing was how it was recorded or was I pushing my amp too hard. A quick counter-clockwise twist of the volume knob always revealed that it was the recording rather than my equipment.

But still I can't help but thinking that some of the "saw tooth" and "square wave" stuff has got to be hard on speakers.
 
Some of the stuff I listen to has heavily processed synthesizers(thick saw lead/etc) and I, too, have thought about the effects of playing this way too loud but not so loud that I'm out of power...I suppose in certain rare instances it can be taxing to the tweeters...but again, I don't see any damage resulting.

Also, in 2008 there was a 'noise' band which released a CD entitled 'music to break a speaker' or something like that--saw it on head-fi.org. It had a disclaimer stating that every effort was made to make the cd as loud and aggressive as possible. Yikes.
 
zenith2134 said:
Also, in 2008 there was a 'noise' band which released a CD entitled 'music to break a speaker' or something like that--saw it on head-fi.org. It had a disclaimer stating that every effort was made to make the cd as loud and aggressive as possible. Yikes.
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You kind of have to wonder if they were successful. :scratch2:

HMMM... That's the first time I seen a reference to a "noise band". As far as I'm concerned that genre would include a LOT of what's come down the pike music wise in the last 20 or 30 years. :yes:

You... Yes you... Get off my lawn... :D
 
There's a big difference between playing recorded distortion, and distorting a recording by playing it loudly.
 
This one reminds me of a story I heard (or read, who knows)

Jimmy Hendrix was playing a live set at the BBC Studios. The engineers (a very straight-laced, white lab coat lot I'm sure) were running around trying to find the malfunction in their gear...just couldn't believe that someone would deliberately cause that much distortion in their guitar sound!
 
If it was the artists or the recording engineers intent that that sound be in the original recording, it's not distortion. It's part of the artist's vision.

...look at Dali or Picasso paintings.
 
redcoates7 said:
This one reminds me of a story I heard (or read, who knows)

Jimmy Hendrix was playing a live set at the BBC Studios. The engineers (a very straight-laced, white lab coat lot I'm sure) were running around trying to find the malfunction in their gear...just couldn't believe that someone would deliberately cause that much distortion in their guitar sound!
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I'm sure Jimi's engineers weren't that stupid.
 
Many years ago when I was selling fairly high end stereo equipment (at Audio Spectrum, Altamonte Springs, FL) we had a manufacturer’s rep come in and give a demo of just how easy it was to destroy a speaker. In particular using an underpowered amp.

At the time we would routinely have customers return speakers rated at 100 watts that had been toasted by amps or receivers putting out 20 to 30 watts/channel. Their take on it was that it was that’s impossible to blow a speaker with an amp rated at WAY under the rated maximum of the speaker and therefore the speaker was obviously defective. All of the sales staff (myself included) fully understood the physics of what was happening but it was a really hard “sell” to the poor guy standing at the counter with a pair of trashed speakers

I don’t recall which company the rep was with or the speakers involved (hey… I’m old) but the demo included an oscilloscope showing the wave forms going to the speakers. He gave a VERY graphic demonstration of what happens when an amp clips (think sparks and smoke) but also accomplished the very same effect with selected test tones alone and a high powered amp that was NOT clipping.

All said and done I think he toasted 7 or 8 speakers before he was done. As he was packing up to leave we asked what to do with the “remains” and he said “throw them in the dumpster”. I think I scavenged a couple of pairs of the cabinets and ultimately replaced the cooked drivers in them. But I digress...

The point of my rambling is that it is possible (I’ve seen it) to badly damage speakers with the right (or wrong) wave forms given enough power. Which brings me back to the possible detrimental effects of recorded distortion.

HMMM… :scratch2:
 
jhoak said:
HMMM... That's the first time I seen a reference to a "noise band". As far as I'm concerned that genre would include a LOT of what's come down the pike music wise in the last 20 or 30 years. :yes:

You... Yes you... Get off my lawn... :D
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I think I need to find out where your lawn is, so I can come over and set up a pile of speakers to play Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music at top volume, and then perhaps some Throbbing Gristle or Borbetomagus recordings.
 
The last 2 minutes or so of "Parabola" off Tool's Lateralus is pretty heavily distorted, but I just love cranking it up.

As for damaging your system, it's not the recorded distortion that's doing the harm. When you drive an amp into clipping, that's what destroys speakers. You could play a pure sine wave, drive the amp into clipping, and fry the speakers just as easily as playing Hendrix (or Tool).
 
I think I had that Lou Reed recording at one point. As I recall I did not enjoy it. The other two I've not heard or even heard of.

Bring it on... I'm always game to "expand my horizons" a little. Besides if I really don't care for it I am heavilly armed here. :yes::D
 
i cant see purposly made distorion hurting your speakers. even if its creating major square wavs on the input its just gonna sound like crap. i do belive though that maybe if its distorted enough and your amps is overtaxed then it might push it into cliping but thats the only way i see something like this happening.
 
Okay, I'll get into the flamesuit.

Distorted recordings can damage your speakers in the same way a clipping amp can.

Clipping kills mostly tweeters and/or midrange drivers from the sudden increase in high frequency content when the amplifier clips. So there is enough high frequency signal to exceed the thermal ratings of the driver.

Can a recorded distorted instrument kill your speakers? Absolutely it can. It just depends on how much power is sent to the driver in question.

You rarely find a guitarist that plays with a lot of distortion playing through a multiway speaker cabinet. They usually play through 10's or 12's. If they did use tweeters, they'd blow them out after some short period. The woofers will roll off a lot of the very high harmonics, before they make it to a recording mic. If the guitar (for example) was recorded with a DI box, more dirty high frequencies are preserved and sent through the recording process. This can be a dangerous recording for HiFi systems.

Distortion really has nothing to do with it other than indicating there's probably a lot of high frequency content. Distorted sounds or clean sounds are just waveforms. It's the spectral content and the amplitude of the content and how the signal is divided amongst drivers that will dictate whether a recording can/will damage drivers.

Even super clean keyboard signals can easily fry HF drivers. If a recording captures a "dangerous" sound accurately, then your sound system also can be put in harms way if you can reproduce the original level of that sound.
 
I suppose if you listened to a square wave signal at a high enough volume that the speaker heated up too much, you could fry a speaker without actually clipping the amp.

ETA: I see Jon posted while I was writing.

The "spectral content and amplitude" is the part I was getting at. Throw the wrong frequency (spectral content) to a tweeter (for instance) and it'll fry, no doubt. Throw too much power (amplitude) at any driver and it'll fry.

The idea is to have a system sized so that it'll get loud enough in the room it's installed in to cause you to go deaf before damaging the drivers or clipping the amps. :-)
 
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Jon_Logan said:
Yup
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But still, the "Distorted sounds or clean sounds are just waveforms" is the main point of the thread. Live concert performances run multi way speakers, and they go through a few drivers to be sure. I'm more inclined to think that's more because of the amplitude than the content.
 
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