db volume scaling

Walter P. Little walterplittle at gmail.com
Tue Jun 9 17:16:50 UTC 2009


I can see how both approaches are useful. Why not support both, and allow
the user to choose which approach to use (radio button in an options dialog
or something)? If we go that route I would suggest having the percent-based
be the default, as it is probably more intuitive to more people (because
that's pretty much been the precedent over the years for media player
apps).
-wpl

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 10:04 AM, Tim Blechmann <tim at klingt.org> wrote:

> >> still, a few questions:
> >> - when i want to reduce the volume by 6 db in the decibel scale, how
> >> much do i have to reduce the volume in amarok's percent scale?
> >> - when setup A is 10 db louder than setup B (setup A may be the studio,
> >> setup B the living room). how much do i have to increase the volume in
> >> amarok's percent scale to get the same sound pressure level, if my
> >> default playback volume is (a) 20% or (b) 50%?
> >
> > Have you ever found yourself in the situation that you actually needed
> > to ask those questions?
> > What one cares about for Amarok is: Is this too loud? Yes. -> Make it
> > less loud!" or "Is this not loud enough? Yes. -> Make it louder!"
> > (Amarok is not a DJ application, mixer or the like.)
>
> for question one, yes. i know, how it sounds, when i change the volume
> by a certain amount of decibel.
> when i want to make it a bit louder, i increase the volume by 2 or 3 db,
> if i have a high volume and want to reduce it a lot, i reduce it by 20
> db ... no matter, if i am currently listening at -6, -12 or -20 db ...
>
> question two was more a rhetorical question to show, that amarok's
> percent scale does not work well for a quantitative description of volume.
>
> to summarize the discussion a bit ...
>
> pro percent:
> - people understand percentage easier and are not confused by negative
> numbers
> - jeff dislikes logarithmic sliders
>
> pro decibel:
> - commonly used to represent volume in audio hardware and software, both
>  for controls and analysis, so people may be familiar with it
> - well-defined scale (i.e. conversion db to amplitude factor)
> - logarithmic scales matches the dynamic range of the human ear
> - tim dislikes percent sliders
>
> cheers, tim
>
> --
> tim at klingt.org
> http://tim.klingt.org
>
> After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say
> "I want to see the manager."
>  William S. Burroughs
>
>
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