Question about the harmonic generation in MLimiter and other harmonic questions

[robertszalapski]

I'm doing some research about the audibility of harmonic distortion, and I'd like to generate harmonics on program material. Ideally, I'd be able to generate 7th order harmonics and know what % THD distortion I've achieved.

Now, MLimiter has harmonic generation that occurs after the limiting stage. It only goes up to 5th order, but 5th order could interest me. If I enable the harmonic section at set it to 5%, it's audible to me with ABX testing, but I don't know what the 5% actually means. Does it mean that the distortion is 5% of the signal when the output signal is at the maximum, and therefore significantly less when the signal is lower?

Just a little confused about what it technically means.

Thanks! I'm a proud MTotalBundle owner and recommend Melda a lot!

[MeldaProduction]

Well, technically there is no way to generate upper harmonics for other signals than pure sine waves . Every other signal produces other harmonics as well etc. So if you want it for scientific purposes, then I'm afraid there is no way for you . I'd like to release some more feature harmonic generator, but there won't be any of these scientific measurements because they generally don't make any sense for audio.

For example, the standard harmonic generator MLimiter uses heavily depends on the input signal level, so having some scientific units would only encourage people to try the "stupid" tricks a'la "for simulating triode use 23% of 3rd and 7th harmonic" and crap like that, which is absolutely wrong and I don't want to encourage anyone for doing anything like that.

At the end you will have to use your ears . Every harmonic generator is basically a distortion, so you should use it if it makes the signal "sound better" .

[robertszalapski]

Sure, that makes sense. I did use sine tones for my experiment. Pretty boring to listen to. I did find out I can hear the tone frequency times 7 done 70 dB from the main signal using blind ABX testing, and it sounded harsh and bad.

Anyway, thanks for your explanation, it makes sense.