sample data export

Audacity 3 Help Forum Windows
1

It may be a stupid question but I don’t know much about sounds

I used two software (Audacity and Sonic Visualiser) to export an audio file (.wav) to a text file (.txt). I noticed that the values in the text file are different.

Example:
time 0 0.00002 0.00005 0.00007 0.00009 0.00011 0.00014 0.00016
Audacity 0 -88.42526 -81.72203 -81.97827 -72.20067 -76.83246 -73.08354 -68.73103
Sonic V. 0 3.79E-05 -8.20E-05 -7.96E-05 0.000245452 0.000144005 0.000221729 0.000365973

What would that difference be?

2

The Audacity values above are “dBFS” (dB relative to Full Scale).
The Sonic Visualizer values are absolute values on a linear scale (range +/- 1)
The values are the same, just different scales (like comparing lbs with grams)

Sample Data Export in Audacity also provides an option for Linear Scale: Sample Data Export - Audacity Manual

3

I really appreciate your help, thank you very much.

I also exported the file as Linear Scale but the values are also different from Sonic Visualizer.

But your answer has already helped me a lot.

4

They should be pretty close.

Converting from dB to linear, these are the Audacity figures:
-88.42526 = 3.79085e-05
-81.72203 = 8.2016e-05
-81.97827 = 7.96318e-05
-72.20067 = 0.000245452
-76.83246 = 0.000144005
-73.08354 = 0.000221729
-68.73103 = 0.000365973

If you’re unfamiliar with scientific notation, the number after “e” indicates a “power of 10”.
Example:
3.79085e-05 = 3.79085 x 10^-5 = 0.000037908 (“e-05” means the decimal point moves 5 places to the left)
https://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/scientific-notation.html