Possible to switch Volume from Percent(%) to Logarithmic(db) scale?

Question

Possible to switch Volume from Percent(%) to Logarithmic(db) scale?

When I open Audio MIDI Setup and change volume from Keyboard I see that volume is changed from 0 to 1 with the step between 0.06 and 0.07. But, unfortunately db volume is changed non linearly: -48, -41, -36, -32, -28, -25, -22, -19, -16, -13, -11, -9, -6, -4, -2, 0dB. As you can see in dB space it is non-linear, first one-two changes are two time wider then last ones.
My hearing perception is that audio scale is non-linear and this is inconvenient for me.

Is it possible to change volume not in percent steps, but db steps with mute in the loweset end?
(using only two-three keys on keyboard)

I have had such a program in Windows, but could not find one for Mac.

Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Jul 20, 2010 10:03 AM

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Answer 1

spazek

Level 2

215 points

Jul 23, 2010 5:22 PM in response to Timofey Basanov

If you hold down shift+alt while changing Volume the steps will be a little more logaritmic...

The other way is to save this two AppleScripts and launch them with a hotkey manager like Butler
(it will let you create shortcuts even using function keys!).

set current_vol to (get output volume of (get volume settings))
if current_vol < 18 then
set volume output volume (current_vol + 1)
else
set volume output volume (current_vol + 2)
end if</div>

and

set current_vol to (get output volume of (get volume settings))
if current_vol < 14 then
set volume output volume (current_vol - 1)
else
set volume output volume (current_vol - 2)
end if</div>

So this is not logaritmic (but it looks like in Audio-MIDI-Setup) 🙂

Spazek

edit: you can even run the scripts from within Butler

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