What happens when sound equipment is overloaded?

When sound equipment is overloaded, it primarily causes distortion. This occurs because excessive input or output levels push the audio signal beyond the equipment's designed handling capacity. When the signal exceeds these limits, the waveform of the audio gets clipped, leading to a harsh and unpleasant sound that lacks clarity. Distortion affects the fidelity of the sound being produced, making it difficult to listen to and often detracting from the overall performance experience.

In contrast, while other options like fade, feedback, and echo can occur in sound systems, they do not directly result from equipment overload. Fade happens with the gradual decrease in volume, feedback refers to the unwanted looping of sound created when a microphone picks up its own output, and echo is a delay effect that creates repetitions of sound. These phenomena are related to other aspects of sound manipulation rather than the specific consequence of overloading the sound equipment.