<div dir="ltr">Perry,<div><br><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><br>
This very same code would cause hideous distortion on a Windows/<br>
Linux machine, because those audio subsystems have a hard limit<br>
on the amplitude that can be sent into the dacs. Mac seems to have<br>
figured out a how to deal with this in a very different (floating point) way.<br>
<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Yes, I think we are on the same page, here. In general I think this is very nice and practical and it probably results in higher sound-quality when sending audio between processes.</div><div>However, I also think it is the same thing Tomasz Kaye found; When something generating extreme amplitudes happens, like a unstable filter "exploding", while we are on sensitive headphones plugged into such a system, turning down the volume to a comfortable level won't help against that explosion. Our ears will get the blast at the full volume the hardware dac can muster.</div><div><br></div><div>For that reason I think it may still be beneficial to employ a limiter. Just to state the obvious in case it helps save somebody's hearing; in cases like that a compressor set to some reasonable value like a 1:8 ratio won't help. The max of the floating point range is so big that turning it down to a 8th of the original volume will still be extremely loud.</div><div><br></div><div>We talked about that before, but hearing damage isn't always curable, so I thought I'd talk about it again.</div><div><br></div><div>Yours,</div><div>Kas.</div></div></div></div></div>