displaying sampling levels?

Audacity 3 Help Forum Windows
1

Is there a feature on audacity which will display the absolute sampling levels? I have a 16 bit wav file and I am interested in how close I am to the clipping limit.

thanks
fritz

2

A quick way to find the precise peak level:

  1. Select the audio that you are interested in
  2. Open the “Amplify” effect (don’t apply the effect)
  3. Look at the “Amplification (dB)” figure. That shows how many dB to amplify up to 0 dB.

Example, if the “Amplification (dB)” figure is “3.1”, then the peak level of the selection is “-3.1 dBFS”.


For absolute levels of individual samples, there is also “Sample Data Export” http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/sample_data_export.html

3

Thanks Steve-The “sample data export” gave me what I needed. It apparently shows the levels as a fraction normalized against 1.0.

I have a recording that has some minor distortion when the levels get high and the visuals look dangerously close to to the limit but audacity showed now clipping so I wanted to double check. Using your method I can see that indeed there is no clipping. (Probably the distortion is due to the mic’s–we were recording Beethoven 9, a work with a lot of timpani in it!)

Thanks again
Fritz