Re: [Audacity-quality] Typed values in Amplify effect

[Gale A. <ga...@au...>]

> From Steve the Fiddle <ste...@gm...> 
> Sat, 29 Mar 2014 12:15:44 +0000
> Subject: [Audacity-quality] Typed values in Amplify effect
> An issue was recently raised on the forum that the behaviour of text
> entry in the Amplify effect is rather peculiar.
> (http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?p=240805#p240805)
> 
> The behaviour has been this way for so long that I'd become familiar
> with it and not considered the peculiarity until now.
> 
> The slider range is +/- 50 dB
> Values beyond this range may be typed (may require that "Allow
> Clipping" is enabled for positive values), but are overridden by the
> +/- 50 dB limit.
> 
> If you type into one of the text boxes and look at the other, then you
> can see that amplification greater than +/- 50 is not allowed, but of
> course that is not normally where one would be looking.
> 
> It may be useful to allow amplification greater than +/- 50 dB, but
> extremely high positive values will overflow and produce "infinity" or
> "NaN" values.
> 
> Validating the text input is a bit tricky because the two text boxes
> may have widely different values.
> 
> How would this best be handled?

How many click steps are allowed on the slider? I would like to see 
the slider range doubled to +/- 100 dB (much more sensible for 
16-bit audio).

I don't mind then if it's thought better not to allow values to be 
entered outside the slider range. 

I also don't like the rounding to one decimal place which is applied
(and also stored for next use of the effect). The rounding is 
apparent in the "other" box if you type a value with several 
decimal places in one of the boxes.  

Can we apply and store somewhat greater accuracy? This is
also useful merely for measuring the peak value. 

Normalize seems to apply higher precision if typed but to store 
the value rounded to one decimal place. It would be better if
Normalize and Amplify were consistent about that. 



Gale