Here's a mailing list exclusive: the following URL leads to a pre-release version of the MAD plug-in.
http://www.mars.org/home/rob/proj/mpeg/mad-plugin/in_mad-0.12.3b-pre1.zip
This version includes a special "Statistics" tab in the file info dialog for the currently playing song.
Among other things, you'll find there an indication of how often and how much samples are being clipped. Furthermore, you can choose to attenuate the signal on-the-fly based on the amount of clipping.
Attenuation is performed internally on high-precision pre-dithered samples, so it should not affect sound quality except to improve it by eliminating clipped samples.
Further ideas I have in this direction include: - "Automatic clipping attenuation" configuration option - remembering the attenuation setting on a per-file basis
Currently the attenuation setting is automatically reset at the beginning of each song.
I'd like feedback on where this is going. Is this useful? If an automatic attenuation option is made available, would the manual buttons still be useful?
Would there be any benefit in an even more manual configuration like, say, a slider? What about amplification rather than attenuation?
Cheers, -rob