As a basic guitar player, I understand that’s more than “noise” and “more noise”…
In: Technology
Distortion is anything that causes a degradation in fidelity. IE increases the difference between sound produced and the source signal.
Overdrive is a type of distortion. Typically it’s used while talking about guitars and refers to a level imbalance that causes clipping.
Clipping is when the signal exceeds the ability of the amplifier to produce, so instead of a smooth sine wave you get a flat peak at the maximum output of the amplifier, causing a distortion in the sound and potentially damage to the drivers as periods of clipping are just a constant push rather than a cycle.
Edit: I should clarify there are, at ELI5 level, 2 types of clipping: input clipping and output clipping. Input clipping would roughly mean that the signal received exceeds the ability of the amplifier to interpret correctly, causing the “flat peak” scenario. This most often happens when you turn the gain on theamp way “up” meaning thay it is expecting a lower voltage signal than it actually receives. Output clipping is when the amp is asked to provide more power to the speakers than it can, resulting in the flat peak at its max output. You can have either or both happening depending on signal and settings.
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