Re: [LAD] Presenting volume control sliders

On Thu, 21.05.09 21:07, Chris Cannam (cannam@email-addr-hidden-day-breakfast.com) wrote:

>
> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 8:48 PM, Chris Cannam
> <cannam@email-addr-hidden-day-breakfast.com> wrote:
> > There is an IEC standard for this mapping in meters (IEC 60-268-18)
> > which works OK for faders as well if extended in a sensible way down
> > to -inf, particularly if you don't want to go above 0dB.  It divides
> > the range up into several sections which are individually linear in
> > dB.  There's code for this mapping in several places, including
> > base/AudioLevel.cpp in the Rosegarden source code.
>
> Actually I might as well summarise here, not least because I've
> noticed the RG code does not in fact implement exactly what's in the
> standard.
>
> The standard has the top 25% of the meter covering 0dB down to -9dB;
> the next 25% covering -9 to -20; the next 20% covering -20 to -30; the
> next 15% covering -30 to -40; the next 7.5% covering -40 to -50; the
> next 5% covering -50 to -60; and the last 2.5% covering -60 to -Inf.
> Each of those ranges is linear in dB.
>
> The numbered levels are 0, -5, -10, -15, -20, -30, -40, -50, -60.
>
> Ticks are per dB down to -20, then only at numbered positions, with an
> additional tick at -45dB (why?)
>
> This is actually quite different from the cubic mapping; it gives you
> a lot more space in -10 to -20 relative to 0 to -10. That suggests
> that you can get away with quite a few different mappings in practice.
>
> > A cubic mapping is also good.
>
> In Rosegarden we actually switched from a cubic mapping to one based
> on the IEC meter mapping, many years ago, because "it seemed like a
> good idea at the time". I've never really made up my mind whether it
> turned out better or worse. Nowadays I'd probably go for cubic, since
> it's a one-liner to code.

Thanks a lot for this elaborate information from everyone on this
thread! Very helpful!

I have now changed PulseAudio to use cubic mapping, mostly because I
came to the conclusion that the most interesting attenuation range is
between 0dB and -10dB and hence should be the range with the greatest
resolution, which is not what IEC would give us.

What makes me wonder though is, if I use cubic mapping for < 0dB what
would be a good choice for > 0db? Just continue the cubic mapping?
After having implemented this I can say it doesn't feel that bad in
the range 0..+10dB, but I was wondering if it actually makes sense?

Opinions?

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering                        Red Hat, Inc.
lennart [at] poettering [dot] net
http://0pointer.net/lennart/           GnuPG 0x1A015CC4
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