What does clipping sound like?

I have Tetra 606s. For a long time I pushed them with a 300B SET at 8 watts. Clearly, they wanted more power. Seems like I am pretty confirmed that the scratchy breaking up I hear on swells is clipping.

If you are hearing distortion when the "music swells" and you are not playing at high volume, it could be that you are over-driving some other part of your audio chain. For example, if you have a DAC with a high maximum output level that is feeding a preamp that has a low maximum input signal, this could cause the distortion you are getting. 

Also, if you are doing any kind of equalization such as boosting bass or treble, or room correction, this may be causing clipping of the DAC or preamp (depending on where it is done). 

Clipping happens only at max output. So if it is not high volume then it is not clipping. If it happens when the music swells, that is a high amplitude signal in the source regardless of the amount of amplification. So this could be as simple as a dirty stylus and mistracking. Or overloading an input somewhere. Could be a lot of things. Without knowing more, pure guesswork.

Seems like I am pretty confirmed that the scratchy breaking up I hear on swells is clipping.

If you don't hear this at high volume it isn't the amps clipping. Could you describe what is meant by 'when the music swells'? That *sounds* like when its louder, but clearly from your description it isn't.


Does this occur on all inputs?