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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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In Reply to: I haven't left the topic posted by E-Stat on October 20, 2014 at 13:15:17:
Goober58, I think you missed the point of what E-Stat said, when you wrote:
"Ah yes the importance of hearing clipping in all it's glory. "
There is nothing inherent in reproducing a wide bandwidth, i.e., 20 Hz to 20 kHz which has anything to do with clipping.
If something is clipping, that's a flaw in the recording or in the reproduction.
In either case, intentionally limiting ALL of your recordings by rolling off the highs as a means of taming the bright recordings is quite an over-reaction from a sound reproduction standpoint. What about the recording which are a bit dull or "just right"?
I have records and CDs which are too bright, or too bassy. The way I tame them is to adjust the tone controls for those recordings. That's one of the reasons why tone controls were invented - so we can do that.
Clipping is an entirely different issue. It happens when a component is driven into obvious distortion and the peaks are literally chopped off. I mean that distinctly differently from "soft clipping", which is a characteristic of analog tape, and which allows the recording engineer to push the tape harder than it can perform linearly, thus improving SN ratio, but without the obvious artifacts of "hard clipping" which is characteristic of amps, speakers, and digital equipment. Now, if you wish to argue that even tape's "soft clipping" is what you meant, I would challenge you to hear three percent total harmonic distortion of a sine wave on tape. (If you prefer to use a more complex signal which has greater distortion masking ability, that's fine, too.)
The two primary failure modes of speakers are over-excursion and thermal overload. This is assuming the crossover components aren't the weak points.
An amp which is clipping can drive a driver into thermal overload. In other words, it's sending a higher level signal for a longer duration than the driver can take and continue to gracefully dissipate the heat. This results in thermal overload, and parts - typically voice coils and their connections - burn up.
Over-excursion failure happens when the amp tells the driver to "move this far" and the driver can't, thus breaking it. This will happen whether or not the amp is clipping.
There is also the issue of room acoustics. Particularly in a live room (lots of hard surfaces) and speakers with wide dispersion at upper frequencies, it's possible that the owner will think that the speakers are too bright.
Also, with speakers which have fairly narrow dispersion at upper frequencies, it's quite possible for the owner to perceive that the speakers are too bright when sitting within the upper frequency "beam", even though the room may be fairly "dead".
Lastly, it's quite possible that you have especially sensitive upper frequency hearing, or that you have a form of tinnitus which causes sound to sound distorted. Either of these conditions will cause a person to prefer a rolled-off upper frequency curve.
But, in NO case that I can think of can I agree with rolled-off upper FR curve as a matter of course for the general public.
OK, now I gotta warm-up for rehearsal!
:)
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Follow Ups
- RE: I haven't left the topic - Inmate51 14:44:08 10/20/14 (2)
- In a nutshell - Goober58 19:35:15 10/20/14 (0)
- RE: I haven't left the topic - DRam 16:45:48 10/20/14 (0)
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