![]() An instrument sends too hot of a signal into the system.For example, the microphone can’t handle the volume level which it’s detecting and thus distorts the sound that it’s sending into the sound system. A microphone or sound source, like a computer, is overloaded with sound.Reasons for distortionĪudio distortion can occur for a number of reasons. It will amplify the signal only up to its maximum capacity, at which point the signal cuts or clips at the maximum capacity of the amplifier. Clipping, in this case, occurs when an amplifier is pushed to create a signal with more power than its power supply can produce. It’s one thing to over-drive speakers, it’s another to over-drive an amp. ![]() ![]() This can be seen on the channel level, mixer level, and even the amplifier level. For the needs of this article, I’ll leave it at that. Clipping occurs when an audio component can’t provide enough power supply voltage to cleanly handle the signal. Typically, clipping is the reason for distortion as distortion is merely the audible detection of clipping. Another way to look at it is the loss of clarity is distortion, the addition of interference is noise. If you run a power cable next to an unbalanced cable, you’ll hear noise (interference) in the signal. Think of it like this, if you scream into a microphone and the mic can’t handle the loud volume, then the audio signal will be distorted. Noise is an external (random) signal added to the original signal.Distortion is heard as the result of a change of the original signal to something else.Noise versus distortionĪn easy mistake to make is hearing noise in the system and assuming it’s distortion. For some reason, the sound coming out of the system has been negatively altered and we need to fix it. We usually identify it when we say something like, “that doesn’t sound right.” And we usually are right in that assessment. It can also be the result of a corruption of the signal at the source. What is distortion?ĭistortion is the sound heard where there is an unexpected change of the original signal to something else. And that last one is what I’m hitting today. A sound tech sees distortion as a bad sound reflecting a problem in the audio system. A guitarist sees distortion as an effect for applying to their guitar’s sound. For others, they picture a distorted image. For some, they immediately think of “distorting words or phrases” wherein someone takes what you have said and twists it into something else. Select Soundflower as your main audio output in your sound system preferences so that all sound output from your computer will go to soundflower.The word distortion has different meanings depending on who you ask. Download Sound flower from here and install it.Ģ. This program is called Soundflower, and here is how to use sound flower with iShowU HD to capture the output from an application such as keynote.ġ. To capture the audio from a program such as QuickTime, you need an extra program to use with iShowU HD. How to capture a Keynote presentation to a Quicktime movie (I assume you could do this with PowerPoint as well) A way round this is to capture the output from keynote with iShowU HD and then save it as a QuickTime movie. For those of you who have tried to do this from within Keynote using the ‘export movie’ command you will know that when you export a keynote presentation the timing can be different from when you play it live, so if you have lots of transitions sequenced to a soundtrack, and you try to export from keynote, it can get out of sync. One way that it can be quite useful is that it can convert a keynote presentation to a QuickTime movie. I like iSHowU HD because it captures from Keynote, it captures movies from Apple’s DVD player, it captures sound as well as audio, you can set it to capture the full screen or just a part of it or a window, and it’s only $29. You may want to try them both out – they have a free demo period. I trialled out a few including Snapzpro but ended up settling on iShowU HD as my favourite. There are a number of screen capture programs for the Macintosh, some of them are free, some of then you pay for. You can also use it to turn a keynote presentation into a Quicktime movie and avoid the sync problems of Keynote’s built in export movie command. It costs $29 and you can get it from here. I’ve had a few people ask me how I did the screen casts for Dragon Dictate.
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