db volume scaling

[Jeff Mitchell]

Tim Blechmann wrote:
>>> personally, i am both a user and a developer of audio software aimed to
>>> professionals 
>> This, I think, is where the problem comes in. Amarok is an application
>> intended for end users (who may know little or nothing about audio
>> technical stuff), NOT audio professionals. 
> 
> well, the dynamic range does not change, when your ears are trained or
> you understand the difference between power and logarithm ...
> hifi amplifiers are not geared towards professionals, either ... still
> they use a logarithmic scaling and decibel units

No, but they're geared towards the more discerning customer, who wants
to feel like they have professional equipment, even if they don't.

But the majority of people are not used to controlling volume on a log
scale.  Cars don't use it.  Portable media players don't use it.  Most
computer software doesn't use it.  Etc.

The leap I've been hoping you'd make -- but I'll just give you a more
purposeful shove in that direction  :-) -- is that while changing the
text of Amarok to show the user decibel values is not going to be a good
change for the vast majority of our users, changing the underlying
mapping of audio loudness that the percent scale uses is something that
is absolutely doable.  Especially if changing that mapping means that
the the percent scale actually scales better.

To put it another way -- most people grok a percent scale better than a
decibel scale, but since the loudness of a percent scale isn't defined
(other than an implicit, but not explicit guess that it's linear), it
can be whatever we want it to be.  And if you create a patch that
modifies it such that tweaking the percent scale seems to actually give
a smoother ramping up and down of volume, which a decibel scale
underneath it all would theoretically do, yahtzee.

Care to give that patch a second try?

--Jeff

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 195 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/amarok/attachments/20090610/841a5c47/attachment.sig>