Not all distortion is created equal (saturation and harmonic distortion explained)

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00:00 - Intro
00:17 - Not all distortion is created equal
01:10 - What is distortion and where is it coming from?
01:48 - Non-linear distortion creates overtones
02:36 - Fundamental and hamonics
03:06 - Total Harmonic Distortion explained
03:32 - Even vs odd order harmonics
05:43 - High vs low order harmonics
07:32 - The shortcoming of THD
08:36 - Clipping vs Saturation
09:06 - Outro
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[@J_Stockhausen]

I love when you show graphs of Fourier transform it makes so much mathematical and musical sense.

[@PetraKann]

Do you mean acoustic or sonic sense? Not sure how a Fourier transformation graph helps with musical sense

[@J_Stockhausen]

@@PetraKann I would say because of the subjective value we assign (as occidental listeners) to odd harmonics instead of even harmonics (more musical, or pleasant)

[@bahathir_]

Sometime the harmonics distortion are like MSG/flavoring in sound. There is sound effect called 'exciter' for the purpose. Great video, thank you.

[@alexChook]

This is the stuff I love about engineering. Using how we perceive sound based on the way our ears work together with solid mathematics to understand distortion and better our music. Thanks Julian

[@gregvanpaassen]

Thank you for this, Julian! It's a lot of work to make a high-quality video like this. Much appreciated! Now I understand! Saturation vs distortion explains why we accept speakers with 1% THD or more (saturation, low order harmonics, somewhat masked), while solid-state amplifiers with 0.1% distortion sound bad - they're clipping, or have other high order harmonic distortions.

[@rytchbytchrockingclub3867]

Deine Videos = Champions League der Audiotechnik. Sehr geil. Vielen Dank!

[@johnhodgson5313]

What is this young feller going to teach me about distortion?! A great deal thank you. The sound clips and explanations were educational, and well expressed. It has been said that a person who really knows what he is talking about makes it sound easy, and Julian did just that. This video I will use to teach others. Thank you Julian Krause.

[@nordineamara4887]

Thank you for that clear explanation , that explains why I love the saturation on my guitar tube amp versus the agressive saturation on digital amps ....

[@-_OduvanchiK_-]

That's not how it works. Not all digital means odd harmonics & aggressive saturation. DSP can easily emulate asymmetrical distortion & even order harmonics. There are digital plugins for mixing software (such as Reaper) where you can choose between tube saturation, tape saturation, different types of clipping & so on. As for digital amps (such as Boss Katana or Peavey Vypr) you never really physically clip them (or you shouldn't at least). Their pipeline of creation of amplified sound is completely different from analog stuff, no physical clipping of components involved there. P.s. As for analog stuff, it does both types of distortion as well, symmetrical & asymmetrical. For example Tube screamer style pedal provides symmetrical clipping & more aggressive sound, while BOSS SD-1 has asymmetrical clipping & warmer sound. It's all goes down to specific circuitry in analog stuff & algorithms in digital.

[@krokovay.marcell]

Very fundamental, thank you! You could do a series just like Colin (Science of loud) and name it „Ich traue mich gar nicht fragen“!

[@SaturnVoyager11]

You definitely explained it much clear & better than most “specialized” mixing or mastering channels. I love your content man. Peace 🤙🏼

[@FretboardToAsh]

Great stuff, going to have to watch it a few more times to really figure it out though. I very much appreciate the 'generic subject' informative videos, even over the reviews. Keep it up.

[@davidhooau]

Hi Julian. Regarding the "musicality" of the odd and even harmonics, there's a simple musical explanation. A signal at 220Hz is an A3, and has it's even harmonics at 440Hz (A4), 880Hz (A5) etc; they are all the same note one octave apart. The odd harmonics are at 660Hz (a slightly sharp E5 with is a musical 5th of the A), at 1100Hz (a slightly flat C#6 which is a musical 3rd), etc. Another consideration is that the intermodulation characteristics of clipping and "warm" saturation processing is very different, so actual music signals are affected very differently. It's worthwhile generating 2-tone signals (e.g, a first and a fifth) and checking out the harmonic mush that gets created. As a lot of the IMD products are at lower frequencies than the original tones they are perceived audibly very differently. Any way, a good video, thanks.

[@rinalubit]

THANK YOU FOR DOING THE LEGWORK FOR ME I knew it had to do with the literal HARMONIes produced but not the exact numbers/notes.

[@Dude8718]

I always knew on my guitar if I play a minor second interval with heavy distortion it generates a very low bass note even playing notes high up the neck. I'm really interested in IMD

[@zanewong2005]

I haven't learned any audio engineering but this is the first time I know that there're different types of distortion. Thank you for bringing the knowledge!

[@LeopardBull5trik3]

Genius thumbnail. Excellent video Julian as always

[@unit335]

This perfectly answered my question of "if distortion is bad, why do tubes sound so good?" - great vid!

[@jimshaw899]

Brilliantly explained. At long last, a clear and mathematically cogent description of the result of harmonic distortion and where it likely comes from. Tube and vinyl fans take note: what you like about these are most likely because of the character of the distortion they add. Distortion does not add to the 'truth' of music playback; but it may add to what you would call 'musicality'. Voila! Tubes and vinyl records appeal to some listeners. (Some even become rabid about it.) Whatever takes steady aim at your endorphins, eh?

[@PetraKann]

You learn something new almost everyday. Explained very well.

[@joelcarson4602]

I had previously a concept of how saturation distortion worked and even order harmonics being more pleasing. I had thought clipping was mostly random noise as the transistor overloaded and went nonlinear, your explanation cleared that up. Transistors fail rather gracelessly when their operating parameters are exceeded. A longtime friend of mine who was an electronics tech called the forgiving nature of tubes, audio transformers and tape "Analog Schmoozing" because there is a certain amount of slack that tends to let the signals mostly be close to what they are supposed to be and fail progressively rather than abruptly.

[@audioexpertsllp1618]

Really very helpful information, Julian👌

[@aukhianteosi9729]

this cleared so many doubts for me, thank you!

[@colourbasscolourbassweapon2135]

The reason we use distortion cliping on a song it's because it Glues the track together on a master aka Another form of a Compressor limiter for your mastering.we also use cliping distortion in sound designing

[@cheerlin]

nice touch omitting the maths FFT portion. One basic thing to note, waveform is in time scale (horizontal axis), whereas when looking at the harmonics, the waveform is transformed into frequency scale Via Fast Fourier Transform (FFT, a mathematical process), and yes it can be applied to real (ie non periodic) signal too. Hope this bring some understanding for anyone confused

[@rinalubit]

You explain terminology so well and make such beautiful graphs!!! Could you do a video covering the true meaning and practical application of enhancers, compressors/limiters, expanders, equalizers, gates, etc? A video comparing channel strips and other outboard gear would also be amazing!! In general, I’d be beyond thrilled if you treated outboard gear like you treat preamps and audio interfaces on your channel. I’m certain there’s an audience. You’re such a brilliant educator!! You’re so knowledgeable and I wish that KZbin let you download a transcript of the captions. I’m using a dictation program. If you want, I could make the transcript into a neatened document and send it to you? If you write a script in advance, then never mind, haha. Maybe I could make a public google folder with transcripts of some of your videos?

[@Alchemetica]

Excellent explanation, thank you.

[@momins-topic4470]

nice explaination

[@AllenCavedo]

Absolutely excellent video jam packed with hard to find information. I doubt that electrical engineering classes explain distortion as well as you do.

[@reread2549]

Top notch explanation, thank you very much

[@uhu4677]

Thanks for that really informative video! 😀 Never knew about those relations between hard/soft and symmetrical/asymmetrical distortion to different patterns of harmonics. Will definetly do some comparison-tests now to find out, what type of saturation I prefer in which situation. 👍

[@user-sx7qg7qv6m]

Great Video! 👍

[@DragonboltBlastter]

Julian, when Steinberg AXR4 and Avid Carbon review? These are interfaces with killer price and hopefully killer specs... We need someone with a objective measurement for these units.

[@germanboza]

Great content, keep it up!

[@teashea1]

most ecellent ---- You are the Man

[@esmoroglu]

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻super clear and very interesting.

[@owlmostdead9492]

I would love to see a review of the new RME UCX II

[@evergreatest7644]

I like how you didn't show almost any emotion in the thumbnail.

[@SaberToothPortilla]

Excellent video as always! It might've been worth mentioning the summation properties of linear response though, since not being proportional to the input on its own isn't sufficient for distortion to exist. Keep up the great work!

[@rinalubit]

Could you explain?

[@nablastudioaceh90]

You explain it clearly...

[@playlist-sb7fj]

Excellent video ! You forgot to mention though the so called perceptual loudness curves (we perceive higher tones louder).

[@saschak6793]

Moin Julian, super erklärt, Top Video! Läuft die Waveform auf dem Monitor eigentlich mit um den Workflow beim Videocut zu beschleunigen, also als visueller Marker?

[@dawnderhenker]

great video...Or I just saw you´re from Germany -> Gutes, informatives Video. Vor allem ohne Blabla drumherum, sondern verständlich aufbereitete Infos. Find ich gut und direkt mal aboniert ;)

[@Ricochetmex]

Super nice explanation! Thanks Julian. As for the THD shortcomings isn’t there a related measurement where the contribution of a given harmonic is directly proportional to its frequency or something like that? So that the masking effect is taken in consideration.

[@JulianKrause]

Hey, there are in fact some metrics that try to account for masking. Dr. Earl Geddes talks about this in his talk with Erin: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oJ-oeIp8eqyjo9k The problem is, that masking is heavily affected by the sound pressure level of the signal. That's why you can't simply put a weighting filter on the harmonics and call it a day.

[@antonios3717]

I love the thumbnail

[@amplifier2]

This is awesome.

[@waedi73]

Damn good video ! Bravo !

[@8lec_R]

Thumbnail 🤣 Great video BTW. Very interesting

[@davidcruickshank5657]

Legend!

[@sotocine99]

Boah, was komme ich mir jetzt dumm vor. Hut ab, Julian!

[@JulianKrause]

Das war nicht mein Ziel. 😅 Hoffe du konntest was lernen :)

[@pliedtka]

I hope this also explained why many dislike the damn Loudness War when producers drive the signal into Red zone. Every time DAC clips it sends horrible distortions, similar to crappy underbiased B class amp ( harmonic, intermodulation) down the signal path.

[@jimamsden]

I'm not sure I agree with this analysis. Asymmetreic distortion produces both even and odd harmonics. That can sound more aggressive than just odd-order symmetric clipping because there are more harmonics generated and more intermodulation distortion. Also typically preamp tubes create asymmetric distortion because of the difference between clipping and saturation in a single-ended tube. But tube power amps typically create symmetric clipping in push-pull power amps. So tube amps produce both kinds of distortion depending on what stage of the amplifier is creating the distortion. But there are many other good points in this video, and I really appreciate the analysis.

[@kevinlong4657]

Hey Julian, have you ever reviewed / taken measurements of any UAD Apollo devices? It's all I've used for years and they are very popular, but I've always wondered how they stack up in terms of the basics and not just the bells and whistles with the DSP plugins etc.

[@JulianKrause]

Hey, haven't tested them yet. I hope to get my hands on them soon :)

[@RedFrameATH]

Hey Julian, I wanted to ask if I can find somewhere a Round Trip Latency graph for the interfaces you have reviewed. Keep making such interesting videos!

[@JulianKrause]

Hey, I currently don't have one with all interfaces. I'll see if I can incorporate it in a future review.

[@danielmauric8491]

Indeed, for some reason RTL is never published by manufacturers, yet it's very important for live performance.

[@rinalubit]

I’ve noticed that RTL is a really big thing on the interfaces I’ve been seriously considering. Maybe that’s a more recent thing? I only started researching all this three weeks ago.

[@user-zr5xy5pv8w]

Hi, I found a extream cheap audio interface called Xtuga E-22 and a foot midi controller audio interface called Meloaudio Tone Shifter Mega, could you do a review for it?

[@AleksiJoensuu]

Huh! So is this why I hear very high pitched sounds on some notes in my acoustic piano? My tuner says he can't, but then he's older than me. I've then just assumed they're a resonance that happens as the wires vibrate and some harmonics are created at a much higher frequency.

[@CastanaEleven]

What speakers do you use in your videos? They sound and look very beautiful, but I can’t find what they are. 😊

[@JulianKrause]

Hey, they are KEF iQ1. Sadly they don't make them anymore. Maybe you can find them used :)

[@natigrinkrug]

How about transformers? Do those saturate or clip? I made an overdrive effect pedal that uses a transformer, so would this be an example of saturation or clipping?

[@JulianKrause]

I would it's say it's more saturation than clipping. When the signal sent in to a transformer gets stronger, there comes a point where the core saturates with the magnetix flux. At this point the transformer starts to behave non-linear and adds symmetrical distortion. But because this disortion is not abrupt as in clipping but sets in gently until the core is fully saturated.

[@muchammadnurwibowo8255]

How about "soft clipping"? 😁

[@lith8128]

I have a 64 ohm headphones. Would a Scarlett solo distort my headphone output?

[@petitpanierdosier3206]

Yes

[@hermannpreinfalk9300]

I would love to know if there are any low budget converters that can handle clipping as "invisible" as those 10.000$ mastering converters?

[@JulianKrause]

Hey, all converters clip at some point, regardless if they are cheap or very expensive. Sometimes more expensive converters cheat a little by leaving a few dB of head room which allows for small overshoots of the signal. But that does not prevent the signal form clipping if it goes multiple dBs over the clipping threshold. Even 10000 $ gear has to obey the laws of physics.

[@hermannpreinfalk9300]

@@JulianKrause That may be! And yet there will always be exceptional talents who achieve amazing things and stand out for their engineering skills. In a mastering tutorial by Robert Babicz I learned that the key to very loud but powerful and transparent masters lies in the quality of the converters and its clipping characteristics.

[@RocknRollkat]

Interesting and well thought through presentation. it begs the question though, why use distortion at all ? If the source material was recorded correctly it should stand on its own. No EQ, saturation or other gimmicks should be necessary.

[@rinalubit]

Some distortion is inevitable, and clipping is an accident that happens to everyone. Some musicians/broadcasters like the warm, colored, tinny/resonating/faintly musical sound, called “vintage” or “analog,” that you got using old audio equipment. We’ve gotten so good at it that there’s very very little distortion happening to the sound waves as they are translated from air to electrical current (kind of miraculous, if you think about it.) The first electric audio equipment in 1906 was the Audion tube amplifier, which as Krause explains produces that round musical sound because the shape of the tube creates asymmetrical distortions in the sound wave. The Audion made live radio broadcasting possible. We still use tube amps, and they’re basically unchanged from their invention over a hundred years ago. They’re why all old-timey recorded music and speech sounds Like That. If you’ve listened to recordings of broadcasts and songs from the 1910s and especially 1920s onwards, you know what I mean. Everybody say thank you to Lee de Forest, who was financially exploited in return for his world-changing invention. He was also called the father of radio and the grandfather of television.

[@RocknRollkat]

@@rinalubit True, some distortion is inevitable. I have grown with the industry, I've witnessed the development of ultra low distortion systems. That was the name of the game in the 50s, 60s, 70,s etc. I am familiar with the arguments for tube distortion, tape distortion etc., all to be AVOIDED. In my day (early 1960s) a distorted signal was not permitted. Nowadays, distortion is added to 'beef up' poorly recorded signals. Learn to record correctly and you won't need to rely on 'addons'.

[@SkeledroMan]

What type of distortion was the 3rd clip with 20% THD?

[@JulianKrause]

Hey, that was the low order saturation. You can also hear the clip at 5:55.

[@Esperluet]

No guitars ??

[@ResolveReviews]

This is... timely haha.

[@JulianKrause]

Ok, now I fully understand your comment ;) Cool video, it's as if we have planned it.

[@djiant8299]

Me listening to this while working on a mix with channels using a tube saturator into a guitar amp into Saturn with a clipper on the master bus: 😬

[@JulianKrause]

*MORE DISTORTION, MORE BETTER*

[@Zolier]

This nigga knows his shit

[@LoffysDomain]

A new JK-video, yipiii!

[@slidersson]

You look like an alien with that handsome hair

[@seanwebb605]

Not last

[@neetkajek8003]

Can you explan in hindi language

[@kyron42]

I used to be a fan of Dj Dark but the last few months he has added lots of distortion and now the music sounds horrible. Videos from more than a few months ago sound really good. Listen to "Dj Dark - Say It Right" Anyone who can't hear distortion is probably listening with their eyes. Does anyone like this type of distortion in their music?

[@kyron42]

This is the video kzbin.info/www/bejne/qaCZlHiaqb5_ZpI

[@JesusPiano]

Sorry, probably the language barrier may played some negative role here but the reality it's that I personally as a beginner didnt understood a thing and specially what/why would all this be applicable for... thanks for trying anyway. *That 1 dislike it's not mine btw 😀

[@alexChook]

Distortion will always affect sound equipment. Julian is just explaining that not all of them are the same and you can't rely on THD number to tell you everything about how the quality of the sound will be.

[@JesusPiano]

@@alexChook thanks. Whats THD, total harmonic distorsión?

[@alexChook]

@@JesusPiano yes

[@pliedtka]

I hope this also explained why many dislike the damn Loudness War when producers drive the signal into Red zone. Every time DAC clips it sends horrible distortions, similar to crappy underbiased B class amp ( harmonic, intermodulation) down the signal path.