I tried Audacity once, but because I had already been trying Goldwave (and was therefor "attuned" to its controls), didn't particularly care for Audacity even though the price was right.

There are a number of wave editors available, and I suspect they all use similar algorithms (or whatever the term is) to maximize a file.

I have found that I can record a wave file with GW that has "gone over the top" a bit and I can't seem to hear any clipping. For example, a couple of days ago I was rendering a Chopin midi file (from the internet) to a wave file in Pianoteq, and when I ran Maximize, I noted that one channel had a plus value which can't be recorded. But the program indicated that the level while recording had in fact exceeded 0 dB (actual values were +.10 and +.14 dB L/R channels). I might just try and see how far I can push it.

In my limited knowledge (Mac will know better than I), this seems to indicate that there is a built-in limiter in GW - on the other hand, this may be a standard feature of all wave editors.

When I first started with PowerTracks, I read about "thwack" in the manual, and didn't quite grasp the concept. One day I pushed the output level a bit too much (past 0dB), and the noise I heard was a wonderful lesson in what THWACK is.

Glenn

EDIT:

Just tried pushing the output a bit more (not hard to do with a Chopin piece and the dynamics can vary widely), and the results are: +0.26 and +0.22 L/R respectively. Will push a bit more and check back.

Last edited by Glenn Kolot; 05/10/09 09:35 AM.