A distortion is the alteration of the original shape (or other characteristic) of an object, image, sound, waveform or other form of information or representation. Distortion is usually unwanted, and often many methods are employed to minimize it in practice. In some fields, however, distortion may be desirable; such is the case with electric guitar distortion.
The addition of noise or other extraneous signals (hum, interference) is not considered to be distortion, though the effects of quantization distortion are sometimes considered noise. A quality measure that explicitly reflects both the noise and the distortion is the Signal-to-noise-and-distortion (SINAD) ratio.
Read more about Distortion: Electronic Signals, Teletypewriter or Modem Signaling, Audio Distortion, Optics, Map Projections
Famous quotes containing the word distortion:
“This is our fate: eight hundred years’ disaster,
crazily tangled like the Book of Kells:
the dream’s distortion and the land’s division,
the midnight raiders and the prison cells.”
—John Hewitt (b. 1907)
“A man’s memory is bound to be a distortion of his past in accordance with his present interests, and the most faithful autobiography is likely to mirror less what a man was than what he has become.”
—Fawn M. Brodie (1915–1981)
“It is not enough for theory to describe and analyse, it must itself be an event in the universe it describes. In order to do this theory must partake of and become the acceleration of this logic. It must tear itself from all referents and take pride only in the future. Theory must operate on time at the cost of a deliberate distortion of present reality.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)