Light Blue/Dark Blue coloring of Track Waveform

[rfox]

I'm a new Audacity user and am immediately struck by the two tone coloring of the Track Waveform display. What is the significance of the light blue "core" of the overall dark blue waveform? Does that "core" waveform have a name? Is it simply the area of the waveform where peak detail is lost? My searching of the documentation, wiki and forum turn up no mention of this visually obvious element.

I'm using Audacity 1.3.5-0.7 beta on Fedora 8 but the two tone display appears on all platforms.

Mahalo,
Ron

[kozikowski]

Aloha,

The outer one reflects the peak values and I believe the inner one is the RMS or average power value. Aren't you glad you asked? The peak values more or less are reflected in a digital peak sound meter or more broadly in a BBC PPM sound instrument. The average, or lower values would be the readings for a US ANSI VU meter.

As you can see by looking, there is no direct comparison between the two. This has been a problem for years. The VU meters in the US read very approximately in loudness values and the PPM depends on a speaker system to judge loudness and uses the meter values to stay legal and avoid damage. Two very different ways to measure the same thing.

Koz

[18D00108]

[URGENT]

Hello,

Is there any way of removing just the light blue part and leaving the dark blue part?

Sorry, but I need a reply by Thursday the 21st of May 2009. Any replies after that will be gladly accepted and much appreciated, but if you could please post before Thursday that would be great.

I am a new user, by the way.

Thanks

[kozikowski]

Actually, the two-tone blue turns out to be a trick of the graphic. If you zoom in, it goes away and it's different on each computer's graphic display system. The two-tone bouncing lights sound meter, now those mean different things.

<<<Is there any way of removing just the light blue part and leaving the dark blue part? >>>

No. Can we find out what you're trying to do?

Koz