What does clipping sound like?


I have been wondering if the break up distortion I hear with my 60 watt tube amps is because I have insufficient power for my 91db 6 ohm minimal speakers. I do question if that rating of my speakers is correct.
When the music swells, I get break up sound. It is not on low notes or high volume. I do wonder how my speakers would perform with a lot more power. I have always thought that any speaker likes more power.
mglik

Showing 4 responses by atmasphere

If it's the old classic power amp type clipping, a tube amp will go into clipping before you know it's there perhaps, since tubes soft-clip. They're not 'fast enough' to saw off a waveform like it had been cut with scissors. The edges round off. It may not be offensive enough to notice until you really overdrive it.
This explanation is incorrect. Tube amps can be just as fast as solid state- the risetime in the output section of our OTLs is about 600V/uS- there are very few solid state amps that fast. The correct explanation is tube amps make less odd ordered harmonics as they clip; this results in smoother sound as the amps overload.
That’s one of the limitations of vinyl records...lol... A digital recording might have sent your woofers’ cones flying across the room.
This is nonsense. If the LP is properly mastered it may well be uncompressed while quite often the digital release is (since there is no expectation that the LP will be played in a car).


The reason the stylus jumped out of the groove is that its mismatched with the tonearm. If you want to talk about limitations in LP playback, this is one of them- you can set up an excellent cartridge with an excellent tonearm and it won't play properly if they are mismatched. The compliance of the cartridge in tandem with the mass of the cartridge in the arm must produce a mechanical resonance between 7-12Hz. If not in that window you can get mistracking and actually have the stylus jump out of the groove. 

I don’t have this distortion on Netflix, etc.

So its not the amps, nor is it the line stage of the preamp. Its something to do with the phono.
Seems like I am pretty confirmed that the scratchy breaking up I hear on swells is clipping.
If you don't hear this at high volume it isn't the amps clipping. Could you describe what is meant by 'when the music swells'? That *sounds* like when its louder, but clearly from your description it isn't.


Does this occur on all inputs?
When the music swells, I get break up sound. It is not on low notes or high volume.
Could you explain this in more detail? So there's no distortion at high volumes or bass notes?