Understanding Distortion and Excitation in Simple Terms

Can someone explain to me in a simple way what distortion is and, if someone has enough patience, what excitation is???
Thanks !

I see you`re a beginner, so I`ll explain it simply. Clipping is when the signal level is too high, i.e. if you feed a very large signal to the amplifier input, it will be distorted. This is clipping - distortion caused by too high a signal level. Excitation most often occurs in all types of amplifiers, most often at supra-acoustic frequencies (e.g. 100 KHz). It usually consists of a closed loop and 100 KHz over and over (something like feedback with a microphone). You can`t hear it because the high frequency causes distortion of acoustic frequencies.
Finally, there is probably no need to explain that both phenomena are highly unfavorable.

Here you will find some theory on these topics http://www.republika.pl/audioton/wicej-mocy.html, http://www.republika.pl/audioton/slownik.html.

thank you bosses!!!!

The attached figure shows two Output waveforms that respond to the amplifier`s Input signal. There is no clipping until the two hundredth microsecond. From the two hundredth microsecond, the same waveform is shown, but after much greater amplification, as a result of which the output level "tries" to exceed certain permissible levels - visible clipping of the sinusoid peaks.

Joachim

Distortion does not necessarily have to be an undesirable phenomenon - in some guitar effects, distortion is absolutely desirable and it is good if it is very large.

lutek85 wrote:

Distortion does not necessarily have to be an undesirable phenomenon - in some guitar effects, distortion is absolutely desirable and it is good if it is very large.

There is an important difference between "guitar" distortion and unwanted distortion.
Example - use distortion of a guitar on hi-fi equipment - there will be a completely wrong sound definition (to be precise - the sound will be terrible). Guitar distortion is a controversial topic and should not be treated as distortion, which usually results from overdriving the input stages of preamplifiers.

Another issue is whether the guitar distortion needs to be bigger to make it better - there is no such rule! Distortion is applied to the song, not to make it as loud as possible.

Joachim

my colleague Joachim Krukowski`s drawing shows a small distortion - the signal distortion is probably around 1%, it is enough that you can notice it, but it does not bother you. the equipment sometimes specifies power with THD (non-linear) distortion of 10%, then the signal resembles a rectangle rather than a sine... operational amplifiers also overdrive when they have a high gain and signal at the input - the signal simply cannot be larger than the power supply and causes this is "clipping" the peaks of the sine wave...
Regards

Few people realize how often their equipment is tormented by distortion, distortion can also occur at, let`s say, `moderate` volume levels, as we know, the spectrum of a music signal is very complex, there are sounds with frequencies from the entire acoustic band (including their harmonics), the amplitude of these signals is also very dynamic, especially if the carrier is a CD/MD, so it happens that the instantaneous value of the signal amplitude significantly exceeds its average value, several or even a dozen times, which causes the forced transmission of several to even several hundred! times more power, we are still talking about instantaneous values, it is difficult to avoid distortions, the only solution in such a situation is to have an amplifier with the largest possible power reserve, only such an amplifier will `cope` with an input signal of this level, and it is worth having an amplifier with a power of 100W, even if we were never to use it, it is best to do listening tests: we drive two amplifiers - 10W and 100W so as to obtain 10W of power under the load, what we hear will be a summary (even though the 100 amplifier has a minimum distortion of around 50% power max.)