Distortion - 10/13

what is distortion?

an unwanted alteration of sound that results in a harsh, fuzzy, or unpleasant noise

if the system produces the waveform faithfully, the signal is _____

undistorted. what comes in and what does out are the same!

if the signal of the waveform is altered, the signal is ____

distorted. what goes in and what comes out are not the same.

what are the 3 types of distortion?

frequency distortion, transient distortion, and amplitude distortion

what is frequency distortion?

a change in a signal's waveform where different frequencies are not reproduced at the same amplitude, affecting the overall tonal balance of the signal. aka voice filtering

when a voice filter is applied, it changes the sound of the voice (f₀) but keeps the original message. this is considered what kind of distortion?

frequency distortion = filtering

this is an example of….

frequency distortion. the frequencies are not all reproduced with the same amplitude, resulting in filtering

what is transient distortion?

occurs when amplifier components cannot handle the rate of change of the signal, for example, in rapid percussive attacks

when sounds are very short, they lose their ______

original properties = transient distortion

when sounds are very short, it makes it hard for us to determine ____ or recognize a person’s _____

determine pitch, recognize a person’s voice

transient distortion will occur if you try to ______ rise/fall times

shorten

when a sine wave of fairly long duration is turned on, it’s maximum amplitude is….

not attained instantly (rise time)

when a sine wave of fairly long duration is turned off, it ______ from maximum to zero

decays over time (fall time)

a drum beat (sudden, sharp change in amplitude) hits a speaker, and the amplifier's components are too slow to react to the rapid increase and decrease in the signal's amplitude. this causes the amplifier to momentarily fail to keep up with the signal, creating distortion and a muddy or inaccurate sound, even if the amplifier performs well with steady, continuous tones

what kind of distortion is this?

transient distortion

when the duration of a sound is made very short, the rise/fall times…

must also become very short. the sound loses its original properties and transient distortion occurs

label

A: rise time

B: fall time

what is amplitude distortion?

when an amplifier chops the peaks of a sound due to a nonlinear change in the amplitude of the signal.

can also be called harmonic distortion because it adds harmonics. a simple sound is turned into a complex sound

what is this an example of?

amplitude distortion

more severe peak clipping =

more severe amplitude distortion

frequency distortion =

amplitude distortion =

transient distortion =

frequency distortion = voice filtering

amplitude distortion = peak clipping (adds harmonics)

transient distortion = not enough time for sound to be produced with original properties