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Deliberate distortion in music. Any harm?

I noticed the same distortion on one of my systems on the Kravitz American Woman and it sounded crappy and inhuman. I heard the same song on another system and it sounded fine with just a normal amount of what can be identified as intended Grunge-type distortion. I rotate gear in and out so much I don't remember specific components.
 
Distortion Test? I give you Jack White. Play the White Stripes, Dead Leaves and Dirty Ground at 9/10. If your speakers or amp fry then they just weren't up to it and you needed better equipmnet anyway :)
 
nickrobotron said:
I'm sure Jimi's engineers weren't that stupid.
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That's the whole point, they weren't his engineers! They were a bunch of guys that weren't familiar with his music (or the concept of heavy deliberate distortion) so they were trying to "clean it up" before broadcasting to the good British public!

Not really that surprising when you consider British radio in the 60s was very conservative...not a lot of modern pop or rock music being played
 
as well as blowing speakers you are likely to damage an amp .. i cant remember the frequency but i fried a couple of resistors in my sa-8800 .they are to stop oscillation .
 
I've also read about the straight-laced, prim and proper attitude of the BBC and also EMI during those years. That's a great story, redcoates. I'm sure they were dead set against that style of recorded music.
 
Markw said:
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.
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Precisely. But that doesn't make it any less likely to blow your tweeters if reproduced at sufficient volume.

There is a subset of audiophiles who have defected from the view that hi-fi is about accuracy, and spend their time seeking out ever more seductive colorations. I suspect the OP wasn't asking about this type of deliberately introduced distortion, but speaker damage from it is highly unlikely.
 
jhoak said:
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
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jhoak said:
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
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May I interest you in some garage pop then? :D

http://www.myspace.com/epsilons
 
Prerecorded music needs to play well on consumer equipment or else Labels/bands etc would gain a bad reputation quickly.
A decent recording engineer is not going to leave raw intentionally distorted waveforms They will compress, attenuate and filter to ensure can playback without damage, but still have the distorted sound required.

Similar with live music - can't have racks of amps and stacks of speakers blowing at each gig, the engineers will design the systems to cope, reputation at stake.

Cheers, Nick
 
THe biggest majority of music I listen to has heavy distortion to it.. guitars, bass, vocals, kyboards.. and I've yet to fry any of my amps or speakers listening to it at LOUD levels..

So long as the distortion you are listening to isn't caused by over excursion, or clipping, or too much DC, you're not going to hurt your system with recorded distortion.

It's been limited, so it's not the same kind of distortion that causes damage.
 
Live distorted guitar sound is NOT the same as a distorted guitar that has been recorded, compressed, and adheres to the dynamic standards of a recording.

Comparing the distorted sound of a guitar amp, to that of the same guitar amp mic'd, recorded, run through a mixer, compressed/normalized is apples and oranges. They have nothing to do with each other. If you play ANY sound loud enough, it will damage your speakers. But your gear can not tell you whether its playing back My Bloody Valentine or Beethoven, if it has been properly recorded.
 
N1ckR said:
Prerecorded music needs to play well on consumer equipment or else Labels/bands etc would gain a bad reputation quickly.
A decent recording engineer is not going to leave raw intentionally distorted waveforms They will compress, attenuate and filter to ensure can playback without damage, but still have the distorted sound required.
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That assumes that everyone gets their music from pros. Not always the case anymore. Internet is full of interesting, self-published music to download. I bought some royalty-free stock music to use as an intro and found the waveforms deep into clipping. It was not intentional.
 
HepcatWilly said:
That assumes that everyone gets their music from pros. Not always the case anymore. Internet is full of interesting, self-published music to download. I bought some royalty-free stock music to use as an intro and found the waveforms deep into clipping. It was not intentional.
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i see this a lot on diy music the kids work hard and make the music but don't understand how to engineer it properly ..it isn't easy for me with pc.s cos i aint got the thousands it must cost for some digital software to work properly .plus a stand alone pc doing nothing else but the job in hand .
 
N1ckR said:
Prerecorded music needs to play well on consumer equipment or else Labels/bands etc would gain a bad reputation quickly.
A decent recording engineer is not going to leave raw intentionally distorted waveforms They will compress, attenuate and filter to ensure can playback without damage, but still have the distorted sound required.

Similar with live music - can't have racks of amps and stacks of speakers blowing at each gig, the engineers will design the systems to cope, reputation at stake.

Cheers, Nick
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You need to read up on the loudness wars... clipped, limited, and distorted to hell.. but it's louder, so it's all good... most all labels are doing that. Even on new records (vinyl)
 
similost said:
You need to read up on the loudness wars... clipped, limited, and distorted to hell.. but it's louder, so it's all good... most all labels are doing that. Even on new records (vinyl)
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I don't think you'd want to listen to most of what you listen to if it wasn't compressed to some degree. Its the over-use of compression, the abuse of it, that gives it a bad name. Not to mention that a lot of that heavy-metal guitar distortion sound comes via a pedal known as...a compressor.
 
i use a compressor limiter for live stuff it has saved me a fortune in mosfets it isn't in play till something goes wrong though i always set it that way
 
Ok, I'll play. Deliberate distortion in the recording does not hurt the driver at low volumes, I don't think, but it definitely can cause the coil to overheat before it reaches it's limits. Moreover, the coil will overheat if continuously pushed to it's limits with or without distortion.

Pete, I had trouble understanding your post at first, please use proper grammar and punctuation, thanks.
 
So can you explain how a recorded distorted 1K signal at 2 watts will heat a voice coil up any more than an undistorted and recorded 1k signal at 2 watts?

I can't see how it can... you're just making the cone move a litttle more and different to get the distorted sound. It's still 2 watts of power... and it's not any different DC current.
 
Jeffery said:
The last 2 minutes or so of "Parabola" off Tool's Lateralus is pretty heavily distorted, but I just love cranking it up.
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Ever hear "Flesh and Blood" from Ted Nugent? It's hard NOT to crank that one up! BAD driving song, leads to speeding tickets....:nono:
 
I'm still trying to figure out how the hi-fi speaker knows that the waveform that it's reproducing is distortion.

I'm not arguing that distortion can't kill speakers. I'm arguing that recorded distortion is just another sound to a speaker.

Now, if I plugged my Orange Dual-Terror guitar amp head direct into my Harbeth's, and turned it all the way up, they'd probably not come out intact. But that is not what is happening when you play a recording of a distorted guitar.
 
similost said:
So can you explain how a recorded distorted 1K signal at 2 watts will heat a voice coil up any more than an undistorted and recorded 1k signal at 2 watts?

I can't see how it can... you're just making the cone move a litttle more and different to get the distorted sound. It's still 2 watts of power... and it's not any different DC current.
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Been a long time since I studied electronics at School/College, but I think your right.

Its the same amount of energy looking at the waveform.
Assuming clipping, the distorted wave would have to have a lower peak/average amplitude than the clean signal to carry the same energy.
If you picture a chart/graph of the waves, the energy is the area under the wave. For the same energy the distorted wave is shorter but wider.

To damage you coils you simply need to supply them with too much power, irrespective of the shape of the input wave.

Cheers, Nick
 
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