"Ian Bell" wrote in message
...
Ian Iveson wrote:
Ian Bell wrote:

That's not distortion that's clipping.
And clipping isn't distortion? Symmetrical clipping is
a sum of odd harmonics. Asymmetric clipping is a
mixture of even and odd. Clipping also introduces
severe IM.

Don't be such a pedantic arse.

It's you that made the distinction in the first place,
silly.
YAWN

If both gain stages produce only even harmonics, then
they will tend to cancel and the remainder will still
be even. If both produce lots of even and some odd,
then the evens will tend to cancel and the odds sum
when combined. The consequence is that a range of
combinations of odd and even are possible, depending on
amplitude and the relative gain contributed by each of
the two stages.

Rubbish, the proportion of distortion in each stage is
primarily determined by the signal level in that stage,

So far we agree, except for the silly "rubbish" bit,
assuming that the control doesn't change the operating
conditions of either stage, and excluding possibly lots
of other things that might be in the circuit that we
don't know about. Or I don't, anyway. Presumably you do?

the last stage thereby swamping that produced by earlier
ones.

Thereby? How? And what's it got to do with what I wrote,
anyway?


You said "If both gain stages produce....." etc

If the last stage has a gain only of ten then the level,
and hence contribution of the previous stage to the
overall distortion, will be ten times less, in other words
irrelevant.

My guitar amp hasn't got a clue what you're on about. I can
see where you're going wrong but hey, you're a commercial
preamp designer so I'm inclined to let you fester.

Try to be less grumpy.

Try not to be such a pompous twit.

Still grumpy:-(

Now you're unemployed, you no longer need to take pride in
the mediocrity of your education. Emancipate yourself from
mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds...

Ian