Re: [Audacity-devel] a basically insignificant thing

[Anthony A. O. <Ant...@ep...>]

On 08 Nov 2002 08:45:23 -0500, Shane Mueller wrote:

>Correct me if I'm wrong, because there may be issues I don't understand
>here, but for many purposes the values stored in the wavefile can be
>more important than decibels. Doesn't the decimal fraction
>representation give a more direct mapping here? 

I'll chip in the audio engineer side here.

Eng1 & 2 are mixing a record. Big desk with faders.

Eng1: "Take that highhat down by 30% Dave".
Eng2: "What?"
Eng1: "30%."
Eng2: "How much is that ?"
Eng1: "-3 dB Dave.'
Eng2: ".... mmmh. - 3dB. Just say so."

No engineer works with percentage or fractional values. :)

Everyone's tuned to the dB scale, 'cause that's how our ears work.
200% boost may look interesting, but +12 dB makes more sense.

"Yeah, take all faders down by 5 dB Dave".

This is pretty easy in digital mixing enviroments and Audacity is one.
Imagine doing this with x.x multipliers. Total nightmare.

Giving the user the choice between 0.5 or -6dB is great, but dB should be
the default, because it's the industry standard. I'm not aware of any
equipment out there that used the fractional scale.

It's better to get the user used to the system as it's used in the real world.

 Tony