[mad-user] Attenuating pre-release

[Rob Leslie]

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