Timeline for Do hard rock singers use distortion effects on their vocals?
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| Feb 5, 2019 at 14:29 | history | edited | Graham | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Feb 5, 2019 at 12:38 | history | edited | Graham | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Feb 5, 2019 at 12:33 | comment | added | Graham | @leftaroundabout Fair point about it not being entirely even harmonics - I'll clarify that. | |
| Feb 5, 2019 at 12:30 | comment | added | Graham | @leftaroundabout Sure, all those old electronics were intended to be linear - they would have killed for a good op-amp! But with the benefit of hindsight, we can see where the non-linear bits are good, and where those non-linear bits contribute to a characteristic sound we recognise. A good example of that is the Motown sound - the backing was laid down first and the singer overdubbed. The tape technology back then inherently compressed the backing, which is why it sounds like it does. And stupidly, the Motown musical makes no effort to reproduce that sound. (It was a lousy show too.) | |
| Feb 5, 2019 at 10:54 | comment | added | leftaroundabout | And, it's not true that valve overdrive is “all in even harmonics”. Rather, transistor overdrive is all in odd harmonics, whereas tubes at medium gain add also even harmonics. But this isn't really the reason why valve distortion sounds less harsh than transistor clipping – that's more due to the softer edges (transients) in the signal, which means they add fewer high overtones. About the even overtones I'd rather say they make the overdrive sound more interesting and dynamic. | |
| Feb 5, 2019 at 10:51 | comment | added | leftaroundabout | Good answer, though the details about overdrive aren't quite correct. In fact valve circuits were originally intended to be linear too, and indeed they are pretty linear at sufficiently low gain. Yes, they start distorting a bit already at ≈ -10 dB, but transistor class-A actually do that too. Only modern circuits cancel this with negative-feedback OP amps, which wouldn't be feasible with valves. | |
| Feb 5, 2019 at 9:33 | history | answered | Graham | CC BY-SA 4.0 |