Real-time digital readout of the signal level of the audio input, expressed in decibels (dB). For stereo signals, left and right levels are displayed separately. NOTE on signal range: in WaveWarp, the adopted convention is that all audio signals are mapped on to the (floating-point) amplitude range from -1 to 1. Any signal outside this range will, by definition, be digitally clipped. Again, merely by by convention, the extrema of the range (i.e. the values -1 and 1) are mapped on to the decibel value of 0. Hence, any signal above 0 dB in WaveWarp, will, be definition, be subject to digital clipping. (Caution: other digital audio systems may use different conventions, so care should be taken when comparing them with WaveWarp!) NOTE on the issue of resolution of the digital representation: once a numerical range has been established for a given digital system, the A/D conversion maps the analog signal on to a fixed number of digital values over the established range. For example, in WaveWarp, the adopted (floating point) range of -1 to 1 contains 256 discrete values for an 8-bit digital signal, 65536 discrete values for a 16-bit quantised digital signal, 1048576 discrete values for a 20-bit quantised digital signal, 16777216 discrete values for a 24-bit quantised digital signal, and 4294967296 discrete values for a 32-bit quantised digital signal. Hence the accuracy of the digital representation increases with the number of bits in the quantised representation., even though the adopted amplitude range of -1:1 is used for all representations. Furthermore, WaveWarp uses 32-bit representation in all its internal calculations, so very high accuracy (low noise) is maintained even for 24-bit audio files.
The computed dB signal levels are averaged over a duration of 20 ms (which is approximately the refresh rate of the display).
