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Amplitude inconsistencies with preview waveforms

I've noticed for a long time that there's a huge difference with the preview waveform's image vs the loaded waveform image. To test this theory, I created a normalized sine sweep with a fixed amplitude and loaded it into Rekordbox. This is the resulting image:

The top waveform image is the same one that is displayed in the preview image. The bottom waveform is what is loaded into the deck. The bottom image is also what is consistent with what the expected result should look like with a fixed amplitude normalized signal. Why is there such a drastic amplitude fluctuation in the top image then? In fact, why is there any fluctuation at all? There bottom and top images should be identical. This greatly affects the perception of the loudness of a track when looking at previewas. I'm not here to get into an argument with any regarding "Using you ears" either so don't bother posting that. I'd really like to know what this phenomenon is and how to fix it. Does this mean that a producer making a track around the "narrow" looking frequency areas of the preview waveform will have a thinner looking track?

Thank you

 

M S

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If I had to guess, and based on the "hourglassing" of the upper waveform, I'd say it comes out like that because the audio of the preview is calculated based on those three different frequency bands around a loudness countour.

Think of it as a L/M/H crossover EQ; the low frequencies go from 20-200Hz, mid from 200-5000Hz, high from 5-20kHz. The narrower portions are in / around those transition areas, and while my values are purely speculative (more likely there is overlapping in those ranges to provide the yellows and cyans in between), you can certainly see from the image that it's pretty defined RED // GREEN // BLUE with very little fading between. If there were wider overlap in the frequency analysis, it would look like a full-on rainbow, as a frequency of 20Hz would be pure red, 2000Hz would be closer to pure green, meaning half way (logarithmically) would make it yellow - a prefect mix.

So what you're not seeing visually in the colours, is also what I expect is happening with the amplitude measurement at that frequency; that frequency is near the end of the measurable limit of that "band," and thus there is some taper.

As I alluded to at the start, loudness doesn't follow a straight line - perceived loudness actually varies quite a bit:

If I look at the curves in that graph, I see similar "thickening" of the waveform in your upper wave image. It could be that's how it's measured and displayed.

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(Note the dip around the 4kHz mark in the graph; that could be exactly where the low-point of the green>blue transition is.)

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Interesting, so the amplitude changes could be a result of overly gradual crossovers in a 3 band filter

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The loudness fletcher munson curve wouldn't make much sense in this instance as the level masking countour is based off of SPL within air and this visualization of this waveform gets draw when the signal is still digital..

 

To me, this looks like a visualization bug. I would love for someone to be able to confirm this. I have a lot of tracks that I see this similar phenomenon happening to that are not simple sine sweeps. Otherwise, this imaging is very misleading compared to any other competitor's waveform generation.

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I understand the FM curve wouldn't necessarily apply, it was a possible speculation given the similarity of the locations of the changes in waveform height, but it could be something they've implemented for visualization.

Realistically, this doesn't impact the performance and as such, would be considered a low-priority issue. Either way, I'll pass it along to the rekordbox team for review.

 

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