db volume scaling

[Jeff Mitchell]

Pavel Shved wrote:
> On Wednesday 10 June 2009 20:23:53 Tim Blechmann wrote:
>> so you want me to write a patch with a percentage scale and a
>> logarithmic mapping?
> According to my experience, Tim, no, they don't.  It will add OMG one extra 
> radio button to menu, users will think that amarok is too complex or will ask 
> what that is, look at funny negative scale, get interested, go read some 
> books, learn what logarithms are when they're maybe 5 years old--and 
> eventually become math geeks (true story, happened to me :-( ).  Do amarok 
> developers want to take responsibility for a sudden surge of maths and 
> massive people braindamage?  Sure no!

...WTF are you going on about, Pavel?

Anyways, Tim,

"yes, it may be easier to keep the user stupid and provide a mapping,
with a good resolution for high volumes, ignoring the dynamic range of
the human ear."

I fail to see why you can't create a mapping that doesn't ignore the
dynamic range of the human ear.  If the dynamic range is -60dB to 0dB,
which is the range you seem keen on having in Amarok, it would seem like
you could create a scale that has 0 dB = 100% and -60dB = 0%...

"so you want me to write a patch with a percentage scale and a
logarithmic mapping?"

According to your earlier email, Phonon already has a dB->linear
mapping, and what sounded like poorly-chosen values.  What I'm asking
is, since you a) seem to think the values chosen are poor (which I'm not
debating) and b) seem to be able to figure out better ones, doesn't it
seem reasonable that that would be a great happy medium -- where the
volume control would work better, and the vast majority of users that
neither care, want, or understand dB volume still have a scale that
makes sense to them?

--Jeff

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