![]() ![]() Ditto for higher-order even harmonics they are also the same note more octaves above.Įven-order harmonic distortion can be so pleasant that back in the 1970s the Aphex Aural Exciter was very popular in recording and broadcast specifically because it was designed to generate and add these harmonic distortions! You can still buy it today.Įlekit TU-8200 harmonic distortion components at 2 W. Second-harmonic distortion is exactly the same note, an octave above. That's why it's called "harmonic" distortion. Tube amplifiers have much more distortion than solid-state amplifiers, but most of it is second-order, which is quite musical. Of course these are all very broad generalizations, and this is just as much due to circuit designs used with tubes or transistors as the devices themselves, but what are the distortions and other reasons tube amplifiers sound better? Some transistor guitar amplifiers attempt to mimic tube distortion, but that's a different article. The ways that tubes distort when pushed to the edge are much more musical than the artificial sounds that come from transistor amplifiers when overdriven. We use tubes simply because they make the music we create sound better: smoother, warmer and cleaner.ĭitto for guitar amplifiers used in creating music. Today their outputs are fed to tube preamplifiers before being digitised for recording, mixing and distribution. Tube amplifiers measure poorly in the lab specifically because of these added distortions, but these distortions are often a part of what make them sound better.Įven today with an all-digital infrastructure from recording studio to home, professional studio microphones for decades and decades and decades have used tube pre-preamplifiers inside the microphones themselves. These are subtle effects most audible to musicians and very dedicated music lovers casual listeners (people who "listen" with their eyes open while doing something else) usually won't notice, but sometimes the difference is so obvious that people's wives will comment that "wow, that sounds much better" when people use tubes at home. Tube amplifiers sound better because of the euphonic distortions they add to the music, as well as plenty of other reasons I'll cover below.
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