muller@inmet.UUCP (05/24/84)
#R:convex:32900004:inmet:2600081:000:1130 inmet!muller May 23 10:16:00 1984 ** Nice answer by W.Hughes, but it doesn't touch on practicality much. For cheaper systems, if you hear distortion, it will probably occur on very loud spots from amp saturation or stylus mistracking or tape saturation. Minimal distortion such as is produced continuously is probably not going to be noticed, but if if it due to some "malfunction" like those mentioned above, it will probably be quite audible. What it sounds like will depend on the type of problem and the music source, but some descriptive words that might apply are: fuzzy, rattle (or rattle-ly), unclear (whatever that means), etc. An extreme example of almost continuous distortion produced by, say, a worn stylus, would be the kind of fuzziness that prevents you from understanding the words on a vocal piece. An example of amp saturation might be the kind of rattle normally expected in the attack of loud trombone notes, but occurring on other instruments as well. And if the bass guitar notes sound like the player has a string buzzing on a fret (and he isn't using this audio effect on purpose...) then it's distortion. Does this help any?...