Why do guitars sound distorted so fast on the system?

[Alpine4life89 10+ year member]

I know everyone here knows what i am talking about. Why is it that you can't metal up past a certain point, due to the guitar distorting? I know on my system, i can turn up any rap/electronic song up much louder than i can a metal CD. Is it the way it is produced, or just a certain frequency that introduces the distortion? I don't get it.

Cliffs

Why does rap sound so much cleaner at high volumes than metal/rock?

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[Blasphemy 10+ year member]

Everything sounds clean in my car.

 

[*SlappinAzz*]

Well, simply because a guitar or actual instrument is being recored by a mic, where as rap beats are already created by a computer, and not having to be picked up. Less distortion.

 

[RJesus 10+ year member]

I know everyone here knows what i am talking about. Why is it that you can't metal up past a certain point, due to the guitar distorting? I know on my system, i can turn up any rap/electronic song up much louder than i can a metal CD. Is it the way it is produced, or just a certain frequency that introduces the distortion? I don't get it.
Cliffs

Why does rap sound so much cleaner at high volumes than metal/rock?

Its called clipping //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/fyi.gif.9f1f679348da7204ce960cfc74bca8e0.gif

its much harder to differentiate clipping at lower frequencies; ie, rap beats.

I'm guessing you didn't set your gains using a DMM?

 

[Alpine4life89 10+ year member]

Well, simply because a guitar or actual instrument is being recored by a mic, where as rap beats are already created by a computer, and not having to be picked up. Less distortion.

That makes sense. Anything complex with real instruments picks up more distortion in my car. There seems to be a certain frequency on the guitars that really bugs me.

 

[audioholic 5,000+ posts]

Rock songs dont tend to have a lot of distortion because of the microphones. lol Its common practice in rock bands/songs to overload the guitar amp (clip them) and purposefully create distortion, as part of the song/music. I suspect the OP's complaint has to do with this. His system is simply reproducing the song. But in this circumstance you have to be confident of your gain settings, so you knows its the song and not your own amps clipping.

And no, playing a song that has distortion added to the sound does not hurt your speakers. Real distortion is accompanied by a squared wave: more-than-spec-rated power output while suppressing cone excursion, both of which mean more heat for the speaker motor to dissipate. But, your stereo reproducing distortion created through Metallica's amplifier/speaker and recorded is merely your stereo reproducing the sound of the distortion, there is no squared signal wave in your stereo's signal chain.

 

[blazeplacid 10+ year member]

this sounds like its specific to your set up.

I can turn mine all the way up with no distortion at all.

i dont usually listen to rock or metal, but when a passenger has a cd or ipod I got no problems

what are your settings on the head unit and amp?

 

[T3mpest 10+ year member]

I find the opposite is true most of the time. Rock has so much inherent distortion that once telling when the speakers are adding some is a little hard. Just hearing the distortion in a voice is pretty easy, which is about all rap music asks your mids and tweets to play.

 

[supermaxx123 10+ year member]

in rap/hip-hop there is a lot less going on, at least thats how i feel. distortion for me comes from real mid(dy) vocals mixed with same frequency bass, it's more due to my mids not being actual mids, only happens on 3 songs out of 3800 on my ipod. distorion is too common is metal, and they are not recorded by mics, but pick ups.

 

[subzero 5,000+ posts]

Everything used to sound clean in my car until i fucked it up by running only one lenght of O gauge instead of running O gauge troughout the whole battery system and fucking up my bass..

Fixed for truf

 

[Blue Fury 10+ year member]

Well, simply because a guitar or actual instrument is being recored by a mic, where as rap beats are already created by a computer, and not having to be picked up. Less distortion.

Ummm no, not all the time. And it's pretty irrelevant to why it would sound distorted. If you have a balanced system, it would play most nearly as it was recorded, so what was recorded must be distorted or sound bad. If your stereo configuration is flawed, then of course it will turn what was recorded into something that sounds bad.

Oh man, I totally forgot you ended your comment with, 'less distortion.' Jeez.. that's just dumb. Every recorded rap beat has the potential to be distorted if the engineer (or whoever) chooses to allow it. Conversely, metal songs may not have any clipping. Did you not think that maybe the guitar amp has some output that directly links to a computer that records the signal to be manipulated to eliminate any clipping?

 

[Bumpin' Goalie 10+ year member]

Many good points have already been raised. Another can simply be in rap and similar genres, the "beats" are pretty straight forward and wide-spread.

Whereas, in some metal and rock, there are MANY similar frequencies doing very different things. Speakers can struggle mechanically with this.

Just another possibility.

 

[bugflipper 10+ year member]

If your system can't reproduce the music cleanly there is a problem somewhere in your chain of components.

 

[AudioDave]

Try the crossover settings? lol I can play Metallica and hear fingers sliding - its crystal clear. Better recording perhaps too? In fact its so clear I can hear Kenny-G catch his breath when he isnt doing circular breathing lol.

Seriously, how high is the mid gains and mid on the xover?

 

[Alpine4life89 10+ year member]

I like most of the answers in this thread. I think it is a combination of them all.

I don't t think it's possible to get metal to sound really clean like Rap. Maybe i am just expecting too much. Also, having a nice system can exploit the flaws in music much better than a worst system.