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  1. Acoustics
  2. AKG Acoustics
  3. Audio feedback
  4. Audio level compression
  5. Audio quality measurement
  6. Audio-Technica
  7. Balanced audio connector
  8. Beyerdynamic
  9. Blumlein Pair
  10. Capacitor
  11. Carbon microphone
  12. Clipping
  13. Contact microphone
  14. Crosstalk measurement
  15. DB
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  17. Directional microphone
  18. Dynamic range
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  20. Electret microphone
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  23. Equal-loudness contour
  24. Frequency response
  25. Georg Neumann
  26. Harmonic distortion
  27. Headroom
  28. ITU-R 468 noise weighting
  29. Jecklin Disk
  30. Laser microphone
  31. Lavalier microphone
  32. Loudspeaker
  33. M-Audio
  34. Microphone
  35. Microphone array
  36. Microphone practice
  37. Microphone stand
  38. Microphonics
  39. Nevaton
  40. Noise
  41. Noise health effects
  42. Nominal impedance
  43. NOS stereo technique
  44. ORTF stereo technique
  45. Parabolic microphone
  46. Peak signal-to-noise ratio
  47. Phantom power
  48. Pop filter
  49. Positive feedback
  50. Rode
  51. Ribbon microphone
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  53. Sennheiser
  54. Shock mount
  55. Shure
  56. Shure SM58
  57. Signal-to-noise ratio
  58. Soundfield microphone
  59. Sound level meter
  60. Sound pressure
  61. Sound pressure level
  62. Total harmonic distortion
  63. U 47
  64. Wireless microphone
  65. XLR connector

 

 



MICROPHONES
This article is from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_distortion

All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License 

Distortion

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Harmonic distortion)

A distortion is the alteration of the original shape (or other characteristic) of an object, image, sound, waveform or other form of information or representation. Distortion is usually unwanted. In some fields, distortion is desirable, such as electric guitar (where distortion is often induced purposely with the amplifier to achieve the electric guitar's desired, distinctive, aggressive sound). The slight distortion of analog tapes and vacuum tubes is considered pleasing in certain situations. The addition of noise or other extraneous signals (hum, interference) is not considered to be distortion, though the effects of distortion are sometimes considered noise.

Electronic signals

Graph of a waveform and the distorted versions of the same waveform
Graph of a waveform and the distorted versions of the same waveform

In telecommunication and signal processing, a noise-free "system" can be characterised by a transfer function, such that the output y(t) can be written as a function of the input x as

y(t) = F(x(t))

When the transfer function comprises only a perfect gain constant A and perfect delay T

y(t) = A\cdot x(t-T)

the output is undistorted. Distortion occurs when the transfer function F is more complicated than this. If F is a linear function, for instance a filter whose gain and/or delay varies with frequency, then the signal will experience linear distortion. Linear distortion will not change the shape of a single sinuosoid, but will usually change the shape of a multi-tone signal.

This diagram shows the behaviour of a signal (made up of a square wave followed by a sine wave) as it is passed through various distorting functions.

  1. The first trace (in black) shows the input. It also shows the output from a non-distorting transfer function (straight line).
  2. A high-pass filter (green trace) will distort the shape of a square wave by reducing its low frequency components. This is the cause of the "droop" seen on the top of the pulses. This "pulse distortion" can be very significant when a train of pulses must pass through an AC-coupled (high-pass filtered) amplifier. As the sine wave contains only one frequency, its shape is unaltered.
  3. A low-pass filter (blue trace) will round the pulses by removing the high frequency components. All systems are low pass to some extent. Note that the phase of the sine wave is different for the lowpass and the highpass cases, due to the phase distortion of the filters.
  4. A slightly non-linear transfer function (purple), this one is gently compressing as may be typical of a tube audio amplifier, will compress the peaks of the sine wave. This will cause small amounts of low order harmonics to be generated.
  5. A hard-clipping transfer function (red) will generate high order harmonics. Parts of the transfer function are flat, which indicates that all information about the input signal has been lost in this region.

The transfer function of an ideal amplifier, with perfect gain and delay, is only an approximation. The true behavior of the system is usually different. Nonlinearities in the transfer function of an active device (such as vacuum tubes, transistors, and operational amplifiers) are a common source of non-linear distortion; in passive components (such as a coaxial cable or optical fiber), linear distortion can be caused by inhomogeneities, reflections, and so on in the propagation path.

Amplitude distortion

Main article: Amplitude distortion

Amplitude distortion is distortion occurring in a system, subsystem, or device when the output amplitude is not a linear function of the input amplitude under specified conditions.

Crossover distortion

Main article: Crossover distortion

Crossover distortion is a type of distortion in class-B push-pull amplifiers where, due to the forward voltage of the base-emitter junction of the output BJTs, the output signal does not follow the input until the input exceeds this forward voltage.

Frequency distortion

This form of distortion occurs when different frequencies are amplified by different amounts, mainly caused by combination of active device and components. For example, the non-uniform frequency response curve of RC-coupled cascade amplifier is an example of frequency distortion.

Phase distortion

Main article: Phase distortion

This form of distortion mostly occurs due to the reactive component, such as capacitive reactance or inductor capacitance. Here, all the components of the input signal are not amplified with the same phase shift, hence causing some parts of the output signal to be out of phase with the rest of the output.

Group delay distortion

Can be found only in dispersive media. In a waveguide, propagation velocity varies with frequency In a filter, group delay tends to peak near the cut-off frequency, resulting in pulse distortion

Correction of distortion

As the system output is given by y(t) = F(x(t)), then if the inverse function F-1 can be found, and used intentionally to distort either the input or the output of the system, then the distortion will be corrected.

An example of such correction is where LP/Vinyl recordings or FM audio transmissions are deliberately pre-emphasised by a linear filter, the reproducing system applies an inverse filter to make the overall system undistorted.

Correction is not possible if the inverse does not exist, for instance if the transfer function has flat spots (the inverse would map multiple input points to a single output point). This results in a loss of information, which is uncorrectable. Such a situation can occur when an amplifier is overdriven, resulting in clipping or slew rate distortion, when for a moment the output is determined by the characteristics of the amplifier alone, and not by the input signal.

Teletypewriter or modem signaling

In binary signaling such as FSK, distortion is the shifting of the significant instants of the signal pulses from their proper positions relative to the beginning of the start pulse. The magnitude of the distortion is expressed in percent of an ideal unit pulse length. This is sometimes called 'bias' distortion.

Audio distortion

A graph of a waveform and the distorted version of the same waveform
A graph of a waveform and the distorted version of the same waveform

In this context, distortion refers to any kind of deformation of a waveform, compared to an input. Clipping, compression, non-linear behavior of electronic components, modulation, aliasing, and mixing phenomena or power supply inefficiencies can cause distortion.

  • Distorted waveforms (file info) — play in browser (beta)
    • An audio example of a short sample followed by different distorted versions of it.
    • Problems listening to the file? See media help.

Intentional distortion

In most fields, distortion is characterized as unwanted change to a signal.

Guitar sound

Distortion is an important part of an electric guitar's sound in many musical genres, including rock, hard rock, and metal. Typically, the signal coming from the guitar is distorted by a "clipping" of its waveform.

Main article: Guitar effects

Optics

In optics, image distortion is a divergence from rectilinear projection caused by a change in magnification with increasing distance from the optical axis of an optical system.

Map projections

In cartography, a distortion is a misrepresentation of the area or shape of a feature. The Mercator projection, for example, distorts Greenland because of its high latitude, in the sense that its shape and size are not the same as those on a globe.

See also

  • Attenuation Distortion
  • Total harmonic distortion — a measurement of the amount of distortion in a sinusoidal waveform
  • Valve sound
  • Distortion (guitar)

References

This article contains material from the Federal Standard 1037C (in support of MIL-STD-188), which, as a work of the United States Government, is in the public domain.

External links

  • A Musical-Distortion Primer
  • Distortion 101
  • Multiband Distortion ensemble for Reaktor
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distortion"