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Why do we say "gain" when we really mean "distortion"?


mcmurray

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cos when you turn up the gain you ae increasing the amount of amplification. Depending on the circuit it may just get louder or start to clip (distortion). Gain is a more accurate description of what's being adjusted.

 

....or you touch yourself.

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A lot of gain in the circuit resulting in distortion. Because the amp circuit uses high levels of gain to create distortion it's called a high gain amplifier. Because it's called that we can say I want an amp with a lot of gain (in the circuit, preamp). That doesn't seem wrong.

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Ok then. Gain means you are sending a hotter signal to the tubes or whatever component you are using on your preamp. Distortion is the resulting sound effect of that.

 

 

Pretty much this.

 

Though i often hear guitarists say "the gain on this amp sounds awesome", this makes no sense whatsoever.

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Pretty much this.


Though i often hear guitarists say "the gain on this amp sounds awesome", this makes no sense whatsoever.

 

 

why it doesn't make sense? It's saying that running the preamp hot on that amp sounds good.

 

It's like saying "this car is great when I give it some gas" It means the car is fast but both ways to say it are correct.

 

I KNOW what you're trying to say (you can't actually hear gain, only the resulting distortion.) but that's getting a little too hang up on semantics don't you think?

 

It makes sense both ways.

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I KNOW what you're trying to say (you can't actually
hear
gain, only the resulting distortion.) but that's getting a little too hang up on semantics don't you think?

 

 

You could probably say that, but I think it's a legitimate point. Similar to when people refer to a "root" of a scale - there is no such thing.

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You could probably say that, but I think it's a legitimate point. Similar to when people refer to a "root" of a scale - there is no such thing.

 

Oh god... why??? :cry:

 

 

Ok, I will respond to that, but just because it's Monday, 10PM and I don't have anything better to do.

 

 

Distortion can sound like anything from white noise to a singing tone. What separates good and bad distortion IS how the gain is structured in the circuit, how it cascades from one stage into another and so forth.

 

So when you're saying this amp has good distortion, what you're really praising is how the gain was structured on that particular circuit. Good gain structure = good distortion. So it's absolutely correct to praise the gain on an amp. There are MANY ways to obtain the same amount of gain in a circuit, but not all will sound good.

 

The ONLY time it is not correct to say "gain" is on a digital/modeling circuit, because you're not really overdriving anything when you turn the distortion up on a modeling amp. For analog circuit, the gain amount AND structure IS what will determine the distortion.

 

 

Are you done trolling?? Because past this point you have to be either dense or doing it on purpose.

 

I don't know why the {censored} I get sucked into this kind of {censored}.. :lol:

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