Audio levels

[Publius]

It's not really as much a result of the floating point computation (fixed point does the same thing if you slide the exponent) - that's just what tends to happen when you apply a lowpass. Or a highpass, or an allpass, or really all kinda of forms of distortion. The peak value tends to go up.

 

[gregorio]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rempert /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well it's a result of the software working in floating point. Convert the same mp3 to a 32 bit wave file and load it in a 32 bit editor, and it peaks at +1.9 db. Convert the same mp3 to a 16/24 bit wave file and load it, and it peaks at 0 db (having already been clipped). I don't know if lossy files sold on itunes are the same way, but I'd be surprised if they aren't.

Floating point or the format or bit depth of the digital audio is irrelevant. All the digital audio I've ever encountered professionally or on consumer equipment I've seen, has always been measured with the dBFS scale, in fact the international standard for measuring digital audio is dBFS and the dBFS scale was specifically invented soley for this purpose. So it's strange your program seems to use a different scale.

G

 

[Rempert]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gregorio /img/forum/go_quote.gif Floating point or the format or bit depth of the digital audio is irrelevant. All the digital audio I've ever encountered professionally or on consumer equipment I've seen, has always been measured with the dBFS scale, in fact the international standard for measuring digital audio is dBFS and the dBFS scale was specifically invented soley for this purpose. So it's strange your program seems to use a different scale. G

I see what you mean. I think it is the literal value of the sample. This is not a peak meter as such, and most people would not even read the numbers from a replaygain scan. They get written to the file tags, where the media players can read them and do their thing.