Distortion due to "brick wall"

[Neccros]

Hmm, given that it's the same DAC it's probably something with the speaker.

Given that you said it's at low volume, it's probably either: something resonating with the housing, port resonance, or the track has too much low bass for the speaker, and so you're getting distortion from either the woofer hitting its frequency limit, or the amp is too small and is running out of juice.

PS welcome to ASR! There is a lot of good discussion, but as you've noticed already, it's a discussion at a high level. Many are actual or former professionals, the rest have been reading frequency graphs for so long, they forgot what it was like before they knew that stuff. It's worth reading some of the background material to get up to speed, believe me, it will probably save you $1000s in the long run.

The speakers barely moving....I dont think there is enough to cause port resonance.... and no its not too much bass as I heard other tracks with a ton of bass and they handled them perfectly....

The amp I think was like 50w a channel

 

[Neccros]

PS welcome to ASR!

And thank you for the welcome!!

 

[OldHvyMec]

In plain terms change your source. Use a CD or any analog out source. That is an analog approach to troubleshooting.

You say you don't understand all the charts and graphs, good. Most people may understand them but they still have a crappy system. What else is new.
You start with a general knowledge of the subject. You are only as informed as the information you have access to. Bad information or limited information
is just that. Personally limited is better, at least you have not been inflated with BS. Bad information, sunk the Titanic.

Measurements are way to an end. They are not the deciding factor in your personal taste. For all I know you are deaf in one ear or have hyper sensitive
hearing. It is a good idea to understand or at least try to understand that charts and graphs are a way for squints to figure out stuff. You can still rub
sticks together to get fire. If you listen to the squints though they may offer a lighter.

Ok I broke it down. Remember for the most part valleys and mountains are BAD in stereo gear. Women, not so much.

Regards

 

[Neccros]

Problem is I noticed this through Foobar2000.... the person had the waveform so you could visibly see the distorted track... Again tracks with less compression do not distort... Its only ones with brick walls like above. I cant change sources unless I had a known CD with that issue.... The persons collection was purchased FLAC files....

 

[OldHvyMec]

That is my point. He is asking questions about distortion. What does a different speaker have to do with distortion at the source?

I'm VERY dense, I apologize. Speakers that I own reveal issues they don't make them. As for the brick wall, if I'm understanding it correctly
"don't build one there", I thought I removed it. Change sources and see if it is the DAC and the "quack quack" goes away. I guess I'm not
getting something? Am I making it easy, or are you making it hard? I hope it's not medical issue on my end. Tongue in cheek. :-/

Regards

 

[Neccros]

I'm just trying to understand why I don't hear the level of distortion in headphones vs the speakers on the same setup....

 

[kemmler3D]

Hmm, hard to say what might cause distortion on the speaker but not the headphone, 50wpc is definitely enough for quiet listening. Can you share a link to the track and a timestamp of where you hear the distortion?

 

[No. 5]

No the setup I was listening to was near field so pretty low volume and the distortion was present. Again only on tracks like I pictured above and not lesser compressed files... I will have to figure out how to clip a section out... I dont have Audacity installed and not sure Foobar can clip tracks... will look for a plug in

That makes over excursion of the woofer or amplifier running out of power seems less likely now. However, tweeters are more delicate, and crest factor tends to rise with frequency. You could apply a high order low pass filter at progressively lower frequencies well playing the section of song that dependably distorts on repeat and see at around what frequency the distortion goes away or lessens.

Problem is I noticed this through Foobar2000.... the person had the waveform so you could visibly see the distorted track...

I'm just trying to understand why I don't hear the level of distortion in headphones vs the speakers on the same setup....

Do you mean that the file itself has distortion in it (perhaps with flattened sections like this)? If that's the case, it may be that the frequency response of the speakers in question is more "illuminating" to the distortion than the headphones used.

 

[Neccros]

That makes over excursion of the woofer or amplifier running out of power seems less likely now. However, tweeters are more delicate, and crest factor tends to rise with frequency. You could apply a high order low pass filter at progressively lower frequencies well playing the section of song that dependably distorts on repeat and see at around what frequency the distortion goes away or lessens.


Do you mean that the file itself has distortion in it (perhaps with flattened sections like this)? If that's the case, it may be that the frequency response of the speakers in question is more "illuminating" to the distortion than the headphones used.

No because the headphones doesn't have the level that the speakers do at points in the song when it plays a wall section....

BTW, this is when playing trance or house, etc... these typically are compressed to be loud...not all but some do

 

[Neccros]

That makes over excursion of the woofer or amplifier running out of power seems less likely now. However, tweeters are more delicate, and crest factor tends to rise with frequency. You could apply a high order low pass filter at progressively lower frequencies well playing the section of song that dependably distorts on repeat and see at around what frequency the distortion goes away or lessens.


Do you mean that the file itself has distortion in it (perhaps with flattened sections like this)? If that's the case, it may be that the frequency response of the speakers in question is more "illuminating" to the distortion than the headphones used.

Honestly I might not be explaining it correctly.... All I can come up with is "distortion" but what I heard might not be the right terminology....
Maybe fuzzy might be a better word???

 

[Chrispy]

What speakers are they?

 

[Neccros]

What speakers are they?

Honestly I couldn't tell you... I was at a friend of a friends house a long time ago messing with their setup. Just reading stuff on here reminded me about the "fuzziness" I heard and wanted to ask about it... Sadly the friend I went with passed away a couple of years ago so I couldn't ask them to ask their friend.

If it helps, they were bookshelves hooked up to a PC setup. I know that doesn't say much

 

[Philbo King]

If the track is clipped, that is kind of a worst case for a cone speaker to reproduce. High skew rate transition from negative to positive (and vice versa), which is tough on tweeters, followed by an extended period of full excursion (the clipped peak) where a speaker voice coil is simply acting as a heating element while it holds the cone at full excursion.

That's not challenging for ear buds whose diaphragm weighs a fraction of a gram and can generate painful sound levels at less than a watt of power, but it's difficult for a large speaker cone (and it's relatively heavy copper voice coil) to follow that signal accurately and requires perhaps dozens (or hundreds) of watts to get the same sound level as the earbuds.
That's why clipped signals are tough on speakers.

 

[Neccros]

If the mixed is clipped, that is kind of a worst case for a cone speaker to reproduce. High skew rate transition from negative to positive (and vice versa) followed by an extended period of full excursion (the clipped peak) where a speaker voice coil is simply acting as a heating element.

That's not challenging for ear buds whose diaphragm weighs a fraction of a gram, but it's difficult for a large speaker cone (and it's relatively heavy copper voice coil) to follow that signal accurately.
That's why clipped signals are tough on speakers.

This makes more sense... This is why I am curious if it was a speaker/amp not able to keep up like a pair of headphones... Like I said a slightly less compressed track wouldn't do this

 

[Holmz]

OK this isn't aimed at any one brand of speaker, amp, headphone, etc.

I noticed when listening to a FLAC that's been boosted and compressed to death aka loudness wars, in headphones its still pretty clear and not really distorted but just loud, yet when I heard it through the same DAC attached to an amp and playing through speakers, I can sense a little bit of distortion on certain frequencies and the music plays. Now if I play a slightly less compressed FLAC, it plays fine….
…

OK then… Play the less compressed files.

…
Now my question is, is this distortion a result of the speaker not being able to react quick enough? Or is the amp not quick enough to respond?
…

No - the speakers are quick enough to play to 20kHz or where ever, and the amp is also quick enough to play to whatever.
Amps are usually way lower in distortion than speakers are.

The headphone are usually not made with multiple drivers, and the speakers usually are.
It is likely the frequency response, or the speakers have some breakup modes that are being triggered by the added distortion of the more compressed source… and the speakers along with the source distortion is pushing them into being audible.

 

[kemmler3D]

So, dynamic compression over-applied to the track reduces dynamic range, which lead to a 'congested' sound, subjectively instrument separation and harmonic detail suffers (this is an intended effect of a compressor, but in this case it's too much).

Switching from headphone to speaker would tend to raise IMD quite a bit, which would then "crowd" the transients / harmonics in the music even more. This would lead to a "fuzzy" sound, also commonly described as "congested" or sometimes "dull midrange". My guess is the jump in IMD from headphone to speaker is behind this.

 

[No. 5]

Honestly I couldn't tell you... I was at a friend of a friends house a long time ago messing with their setup.

Then understand that you'll have to be content with a few plausible possibilities rather than a definitive answer to the cause of the distortion you heard.

If the ultimate source of the distortion was in the recording itself, than speakers that were slightly brighter than, or produced more non-linear distortion (either inherently or because of the nature of the signal being fed them) than the headphones seem like the most plausible possibilities to me. If the ultimate source of distortion wasn't the the recording, than higher non-linear distortion from the speakers or amplifier caused by higher RMS level of the recording seem plausible to me.

 

[Holmz]

…
Switching from headphone to speaker would tend to raise IMD quite a bit, which would then "crowd" the transients / harmonics in the music even more. This would lead to a "fuzzy" sound, also commonly described as "congested" or sometimes "dull midrange". My guess is the jump in IMD from headphone to speaker is behind this.

There is likely a plug lurking ^in here^ somewhere for speaker drivers that have lower distortion, assuming that @Neccros does not like the higher distortion.

 

[fpitas]

I'm referring to a more "what part of the speaker" in general would lessen the distortion... Like the cabinet, crossover, the terminals, etc.

That's like asking what part of a car makes it win a road race. Kind of: everything. Generally not the wires or the terminals. Although a bad connection at cheap terminals will cause distortion.

 

[MRC01]

Music with heavy dynamic compression is often digitally clipped, adding insult to injury. A clipped wave has a sudden transition which requires lots of very high frequencies to reproduce. This is the opposite of normal music, where high frequencies naturally attenuate. A transducer (whether headphone or speaker) that attenuates high frequencies would probably sound less bad when playing clipped music.

Another factor is that this can trigger a normally clean transducer to distort. Because most musical energy is in the bass, much less in the treble (more on that here), transducers aren't designed to reproduce high power treble. It's simply not needed when playing music. This natural attenuation by frequency is typically something like 6 dB / octave. So with music having peak energy at 160 Hz, expect 10 kHz (6 octaves higher) to be roughly 40 dB quieter. That's why the monster speaker capable of hundreds of watts may only need a 1 watt tweeter. A clipped waveform sends much more power to the tweeter than normal music would, which can overload it.

Dynamic compression - even when not clipped - raises the relative level of high frequencies, making the music sound more "crispy" and unnatural. When it clips this effect is even stronger.

Furthermore, even if the tweeter did reproduce the clipped waveform accurately without distortion, it would sound terrible and unnatural anyway.

PS: If I had 2 systems and A sounded better than B when playing dynamically compressed and clipped music, I might be more suspicious of system A than of B.