Date: Sun, 06 Dec 2009 11:43:52 +0200 From: Aragon Gouveia <aragon@phat.za.net> To: freebsd-multimedia@freebsd.org Subject: hw.snd.vpc_0db crazy default? Message-ID: <4B1B7CD8.9030101@phat.za.net>
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Hi, For a while I've been finding that more and more of my music has been sounding really distorted at high volume levels. I initially shrugged it off to bad mastering, but after playing some music that I know well today, I finally got to the bottom of it. In my hunt for the source I noticed that if I kept the volume level at or below 50% in my player app, everything would sound fine. Anything above that and distortion just gets progressively bad. So I started digging into FreeBSD 8.0's new sound system and noticed the hw.snd.vpc_0db tunable that defaults to 45. Basically I'm gathering that at that default, when a sound app has its volume level at 45%, the sound system performs zero gain or attenuation to the app's output. Volume levels above that will cause source material with a high recording level (just about all music these days) to clip due to the sound system now applying soft gain. This strikes me as crazy. Surely everyone who plays music on FreeBSD 8.0 must be experiencing distortion above 45% volume levels because of this default? Why does this default to 45% and not 100%, or maybe 95%? Thanks, Aragon
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