Does THD effect noise?

Does Total Harmonic Distortion numbers tell us anything about the amount of hiss and noise present in a stereo product? Have a question you want to ask Paul? www.psaudio.com...
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[@jonathansturm4163]

I'm not usually a grammar Nazi, but: Effect = "To bring about (an event, a result)" Affect = "to influence"

[@jonathansturm4163]

@Larry Niles Undeeded? "Either thou Macbeth, Or else my Sword with an unbattered edge I sheath againe undeeded." Oh, my name's not Johnny BTW.

[@SuspiciousAra]

very unique :D yeah! it was a joke, hehe

[@swinde]

Perhaps you are just making the point, but something is either unique or it is not. There are no variances of "unique".

[@jonathansturm4163]

@@swinde Er, John ara said: "it was a joke" which kind of gives his game away... It was a deliferate mistale ;-)

[@mrsurname9217]

@@swinde You are almost unique in believing so.

[@artderix803]

Let's go SCOTT, make tapes CrO2 available again! In the '80's i learnt to repair STUDER REVOX taperecorders and cassettedecks! I've got my own ReVox B215 still working perfect from 1986! With a good tape in it, it works fantastic after all these years! Even (well kept tapes, in a climatic good room stored) sound pretty good.. recorded in the 1990's! i shure there comes a day that there will be made good cassettetapes again.. Who starts?

[@InsideOfMyOwnMind]

I recently had an opportunity to witness the operation of an old wire recorder. To my complete shock and amazement behind all the primitive characteristics was a certain openness that I could not explain. Tell you what Paul, meet us half way and do an 8trk player. Gotta love that woomphy bass, right?

[@bullwhipjohnson8247]

The metric for Noise is called, Signal to Noise Ratio. Or, SNR.

[@johnyang799]

Noise level it is. It's usually measured in uVrms. SNR is SNR different from self noise.

[@johnyang799]

It's pretty easy to find devices with high snr that has hiss.

[@jonathansturm4163]

@@johnyang799 Hiss is probably caused by an excess of snake oil [strictly TIC]

[@johnyang799]

@@jonathansturm4163 Lol. You need to under stand what snr is. Noise floor is easily hindered by the high output voltage. Let along, snr is measured at 0db for signal rms and -60 for noise rms. Snr is easily over 120db sometimes 130. But still has over 2uV noise floor. For dacs sure full dynamic range will be used, for amplifiers no, Noise floor is what is important.

[@jonathansturm4163]

@@johnyang799 Er, yes. I know. Note I put "[strictly TIC]" in my comment. I was just being a smart-arse... TIC = Tongue In Cheek.

[@swinde]

Cassettes actually approached the quality of quality vinyl in the mid to late 70s. The first one was the Advent Cassette tape deck, which added Dolby B and CrO2 oxide tape. there were many quality Cassette machines on the market then.

[@jonathansturm4163]

For many of us, the first hi-fi cassette decks were manufactured by Nakamichi in 1972, a three head and a two head machine. IIRC the Advent 201 was released in 1974 and was a two head deck. I couldn't afford either of the Nakamichi offerings in 1972 and had to settle for a Maruni that still cost me several weeks' pay.

[@ThinkingBetter]

Cassette tapes were the 1970s equivalent to over-compressed MP3 both aiming at convenience over sound quality. Nowadays we’ve come a long way on convenience with any decent streaming service while also providing better sound quality than cassettes. With modern internet connections allowing master quality audio streamed to the home with no loss, I see no desire in going back to cassettes.

[@jonathansturm4163]

Not to mention cassette tape's other "qualities". I purchased a Joni Mitchell cassette (Court and Spark IIRC). I shifted the tape into another shell in an endeavour to get it to play without _severe_ wow, but to no avail. A cassette of JJ Cale's Troubador had a short burst of very loud, very low frequency noise at the beginning that was clearly not intended to be part of the album. I purchased very few commercial cassettes and they were all, without exception, utter shit in one way or another.

[@ThinkingBetter]

Jonathan Sturm Yes the commercial cassettes were not great and also the quality varied greatly due to differences in recording method. The use of Dolby B/C and better metal tapes could have significantly improved the audio quality but nobody used it for pre-recorded tapes. The convenience of having pre-recorded tapes that could play even in the cheapest cassette player was a major factor of how shitty the sound was.

[@fbtippmann]

Suh-LINE-uh, KS Love your videos, Paul!

[@bernier55]

I love these videos. Greetings from Uruguay in Southamerica

[@unvergebeneid]

Okay, so clearly nobody from the staff reads the comments or the typo in the title of the video would've been fixed by now.

[@vwr32jeep]

The VU meters on equipment are completely useless. But I absolutely love them and miss seeing them. I even added a Douk Audio One Little Bear to my setup just for the aesthetic.

[@johnlebeau5471]

Cassettes actually sound better than people old enough to remember them, remember. The slow speeds require Dolby processing to eliminate the hiss. They do not sound better than a writable CD or a USB flash drive. Just saying. There is a reason no one makes cassette decks any more. Full disclosure: I own a professional level Nakamichi cassette deck, it really does sound very good and very analog. I also have a working 8 track player, but I won't go into that. And finally, a semi-pro Revox reel to reel.

[@machintelligence]

How very interesting. I "knew" that noise and THD were independent, but never realized that they were summed to report total distortion.

[@jonathansturm4163]

Me either. You can still learn something new even at the ripe old age of 67 :-)

[@GustoTheGamer]

cassette can sound almost like a cd....metal type iv tape with dolby-s.

[@doylewayne3940]

Cassette tape, wow, as I sit in front of my Teac A-3300-SX loaded with maxell reel, thanks Paul

[@randomtube8226]

Lower the THD the better across the entire given bandwidth. Amplifiers with hissing drives me crazy. The Klipsch Forte lll picks up everything.

[@quantumchang4410]

What are the root causes of THD in an amplifier?

[@Tom_Losh]

Essentially "THD" is noise in the presence of a signal...

[@manleys69]

The Japanese make/made all the mechanisms for tape decks. Not sure if they still make them?

[@turbo5483]

1:36 Mick-in-Tosh

[@tomlewis7911]

So many questions as I was once considered a top consultant for several high-end stores (The Audio Sound, Sound Innovations, The Gramophone) in Oklahoma markets as well as the owner of The Rolling Radio in Fayetteville Arkansas. Is there an anechoic chamber for audio monitors/consumer speaker evaluation in Colorado? I’m conducting evaluations of a series of tweeter, midrange and cabinet design and am hoping for a discreet evaluation in room placement and dispersion parameters documentation.

[@gasperbregar630]

I am glad I am not the only one who thinks McIntosh amplifiers look awful

[@jonathansturm4163]

@George Blisson When you get to my age (67) all young ladies look beautiful regardless of their colour. Even my great niece who is less than 24 hours old :-)

[@TheAzdavay]

Come on Paul. Cassettedeck s doesnt sound great? I have a Nakamichi DR2 and it sound very, i mean very good.

[@jonathansturm4163]

@ TheAzdavay On occasion very good, but never great, sadly. Commercial cassettes were always shit. Home made cassettes made on TDK SA, or BASF Chrome Dioxide on a Nakamichi three head machine were another matter. After a couple of decades my cassettes started falling apart and the oxide started to come off the tape, but this latter also happened to high quality studio tapes also. Vinyl is much longer lasting as are commercial CDs. Burnt CDs have a limited life also, sometimes quite short.

[@brianmoore581]

My CD player in my car died about two years ago, and seeing as how the car itself is probably not far behind, I have been reluctant to replace it. Luckily, my car also has a cassette player and I still have a few TDK MA-XG cassettes from the 90's, so I unpacked my Sony TC-KA3 es cassette deck and it still makes some pretty damn good sounding tapes. I wouldn't listen to them at home necessarily, but they are great in the car.

[@TheAzdavay]

@@jonathansturm4163 you should definitely maintain it. strings, orange caps etc. replaced.And then it sounds like new again.

[@TheAzdavay]

@@brianmoore581 the only problem with cassettes in car is to change track 😁.

[@brianmoore581]

@@TheAzdavay true, although if you make your own tapes, then you like every song, so no need to skip tracks. I actually enjoy choosing songs and recording tapes for the car. Gotta change my tunes every once in a while.

[@TheMrJoaozinhoo]

Hello Paul, any news about the DSD upgrade firmware ?

[@carlitomelon4610]

You did bow to demand for a meter! Maybe it shows THD+N level? ( Could be left disconnected ;-)

[@kencohagen4967]

THD is noise generated by the amplifier. Anything below 1% is inaudible, theoretically. Most decent amps are rated at power ratings well below 1%. Shitty receivers, car amps from China and most of the worst amplifiers sold from the 70's on are rated at 1% or worse, at 10% THD. 10% THD is total shit as you should expect. If you buy an amp rated at 10% k ow that the actual clean power is going to be much lower than that. If your amp is rated at 1% THD it won't be clean as as much less than 10%, but your still giving up some power to be clean. As far as mix tapes, I gave them away to friends who couldn't afford to buy the albums I had on hand, as well as make copies for myself for use in my car. In Arizona the intense heat of the summer months would destroy tapes in a few minutes of left inside a car. So I never used the source material in my car, I made copies just in case I forgot and left one in my car. A blank tape of decent quality at the time was much much cheaper than an album or CD. So if I wasted a two dollar blank tape it was nothing compared to a $15 to $20 dollar album. And it was legal to make copies as long as I didn't profit from the sales of someone else's work.

[@HiFiInsider]

tube amps have higher THD so they sound more "analog". :)

[@wellivea1]

Metal tapes combined with dolby NR already existed though. They just weren't as common as normal ferric oxide tapes on a cheap boombox. I'm not sure if anybody still manufactures those (they sure don't make dolby nr chips anymore). Maybe you could find a way to make a dolby nr box in the same vein of you guys starting out making phono boxes? Maybe they would license it to you if you begged hard enough.

[@jonathansturm4163]

Presumably you refer here to Dolby B. In theory it reduced tape hiss, but it only worked if the recording and playback were correctly adjusted and that almost never was the case. Switching Dolby B on reduced the hiss, but also seriously affected the high frequencies making them sound dull.

[@wellivea1]

@@jonathansturm4163 Well, there were improved variations and other companies that did that sort of thing. Either way, there's a ton of tapes out there and if they have dolby nr, they'll sound best with the decoder.

[@wellivea1]

Maybe they could do a box that can encode/decode all the Dolby NR variants and even dbx, but that's crazy, even for PS Audio xD

[@wellivea1]

You have to do something very similar in a phono box due to the riaa curve, so I don't think it's heretical whatsoever.

[@wellivea1]

Also, the high frequencies are emphasized when Dolby B is applied, and when you remove it, it goes to normal. I think that might be more of a perception because you start out listening to it emphasized, especially on low end equipment.

[@MindBodySoulOk]

thought this was about pot.

[@jeromemckenna7102]

Isn't it a bit childish to purposely mispronounce the name McIntosh? Your own name starts with 'Mc' so you should know how to pronounce it.

[@littlegandhi1199]

Jerome Mc Kenna yeah but it's childish to intentionally mispronounce your friends name for a laugh too.

[@pauldickerson7042]

Always warm, lighthearted and knowledgeable. Paul is doing more here than talking audio. Such a treasure!

[@jonathansturm4163]

@@pauldickerson7042 Indeed. And it's fun being lighthearted and childish when you're in your senior years. I referred in another comment to NakaScratchy. Does it mean I didn't like them? Far from it. I was in awe of their machines back in the early 70s.

[@jonathansturm4163]

@George Blisson "all businesses say bad stuff about their competition" Definitely not true. None of the businesses I managed and/or owned did that. It's very counterproductive since it puts the idea of the bad things you say into your clients' minds. If for example you say your competition engages in X, they will assume you do also. One quite noticeable thing about Paul is doesn't badmouth his competition. To express a personal preference is _not_ badmouthing. Indeed, Paul frequently makes complimentary remarks about direct competitors - Schiit Audio for example who also make DACs.

[@jonathansturm4163]

@George Blisson Seems to me that all the badmouthing here is coming from someone called George Blisson...

[@shaun9107]

This guy has never used tapes . Try thc instead , it works wanders

[@jonathansturm4163]

And super glue, or epoxy stops things wandering even betterer than tape!