[sdiy] now on to tubes

[Theo]

I know my view is not one popular with the high-end boys, but anyways.
My 2 cnts:

Low order (up to 5th?) harmonics bearable (good?), higher order bad.
Less harmonics is better.
Odd/even highly irrelevant.

When listening to a mix, the summed waveform from all sounds playing is what
distorts, not individual instruments.
As a result there is little harmonic relation between the harmonics added by
the distortion and the notes of the music.
This is why the odd/even and 'anything but the 5th' theories holds true for
guitar amps (and guitarist personal taste!)
but for tube-fi home entertainment it's kind off bull.

Try playing a polysynth thru a distortion pedal.
First play a monophonic line, then lay down some chords based on 3rd's  and
4th's
You will see what I mean :)

Then again when listening to music normally you don't use a tube amp as a
continues distortion effect.
So distortion would only occur during the transients in the music.
There is a lot of in-harmonics going on then anyways.
The added harmonics helps instruments that causes the transient to stand out
a bit more.


Have fun
Theo



----- Original Message -----
From: anthony <aankrom at bluemarble.net>
To: <synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>
Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2005 7:26 AM
Subject: Re: [sdiy] now on to tubes


> > Some of them are essentially the same guts as in the old favorites such
as
> > 6L6 - just with a top cap. Anyway, non-linearities are part of what
gives
> > tube amps their so called tube sound.
>
> I thought about that as I wrote that. The nice 2nd order distortion of say
a
> single-ended amp is a nonlinearity sure. Is it too simple to say even
> harmonics = good, odd harmonics = bad? (I think I read somewhere once that
> knocking out the 3rd harmonic and leaving in the evens and the rest of the
> odds sounded good. Could just be because their magnitude is much less.
Like
> I really like how a 33% duty-cycle squarewave sounds, but not so much the
> regular squarewave.) That's what I was thinking of. But that would be more
a
> matter of topology I'd think.
>
>
>
>
> > Ken
> > _______________________________________________________________________
> > Ken Stone   sasami at hotkey.net.au or sasami at cgs.synth.net
> > Modular Synth PCBs for sale <http://www.blaze.net.au/~sasami/synth/>
> > Australian Miniature Horses & Ponies <http://www.blaze.net.au/~sasami/>
> >
> >
>
>
>