Half Db Phenomenon

[raul.pires (Hun Ting Forme)]

Hello Renoise forums community!

So, I imported Periphery’s song ‘Insomnia’, which I know for a fact that reaches the ceiling of 0dB, into the sample editor just to experiment. Curiously the meter in the output track only reaches -6.020dB which interestingly corresponds to a half power decrease.

I think that it’s probably related to the sampling properties of Renoise.

Can someone explain to me the reason for this phenomenon? And is there something you can change in Renoise preferences/settings to avoid it?

Thank you

[dblue]

See the following thread:

[Done 2.7] Render To Sample -6Db Solution

There has been lots of discussion whether the -6db in render to sample is ok or not and usually the opinion has been that it’s there to avoid clipping. Avoiding clipping is good, but avoiding clipping and not altering volume is even better - so could we have an option to automatically amplify rendered samples in +6db in sample properties? Would solve all the problems imo.

The thread talks about rendering to sample, but a lot of the same stuff applies. Essentially, there’s a -6dB headroom on every track in Renoise. If you want to avoid this, then you need to apply a 6dB gain boost at some point.

[raul.pires (Hun Ting Forme)]

Ok, now I can rest my conscience xD

As it has been discussed a lot I’m not going to stress it more.

Thank you so much for the fast reply.

[insane (allie)]

Personally, I always looked at it like this: Every sample’s max volume is half of that of all the tracks.

But then I learned that, in the actual programming, it’s the TRACKS that are decreased, NOT the samples.