From: langhaarrocker <phil_at_x-phobie.de>
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2002 19:17:23 +0200

On Wed, 23 Oct 2002 15:00:23 +0200, "Henri DAVID" <hdavid_at_mail.com>
wrote:

>My idea is to read peaks values from the MAS frequently let say 50 times per
>second (is this value to high ?? will it drain to much juice?), and update
>the peakmeter display only 10 times per second. the peakmeter would the not
>display the last read QPeak value but an average of the last 5 five value or
>maybe as it is a _PEAK_meter the max of the five last values would be then
>more appropriated here.

I experimented a lot with the peak meter code and yes, we can get it
much more accurate. But only on the expense of more cpu activity which
would give us less time to put the cpu in sleep mode -> energy
consumption. So I decided against busy reading for playback as is
merely a "nice to have" toy here. The only time a meter might become
relevant is when copying from the analog output to another device. But
in that case the recording device should provide the meter.
When the jukebox is recording the whole thing looks completely
different as the meter becomes a necessary tool. Then we want it to be
as accurate as necessary.

The code is already prepared for busy reading and asynchronous
display. The intension is to call peak_meter_peek like hell. Frequent
calls to peak_meter_peek searches for the maximum. Whenever a screen
refresh is needed a call to peak_meter_read_l provides it with this
maximum.

Your idea to read out the mas twice in peak_meter_peek would be good
for detecting clips. But that as well is already in the code - even if
a little bit hidden:

Note that in peak_meter_draw a call to peak_meter_read_l is followed
by a call to peak_meter_peek:

void peak_meter_draw(int x, int y, int width, int height) {
    int left = 0, right = 0;
    static int last_left = 0, last_right = 0;
    int meterwidth = width - 3;
    int i;

    /* if disabled only draw the peak meter */
    if (peak_meter_enabled) {
        /* read the volume info from MAS */
        left = peak_meter_read_l();
        right = peak_meter_read_r();

        peak_meter_peek();
   ....

Both functions read out the volume info and thus we compare two peak
values that are very close in time. This is about as good as we can go
for clip detection.

The real trick for high performance meter would be in wps.c in the
function wps_show. Here is a code snippet that would dramatically
increase the precision of the peak meter - at the cost of cpu time.

#ifdef HAVE_LCD_BITMAP
        /* when the peak meter is enabled we want to have a
            few extra updates to make it look smooth. On the
            other hand we don't want to waste energy if it
            isn't displayed */
        if (peak_meter_enabled) {
            int i;

            for (i = 0; i < 4; i++) {
                long end_time = current_tick + HZ / 20;
                do {
                    button = button_get(false);
                }
                while ( TIME_BEFORE(current_tick, end_time) &&
                        button == BUTTON_NONE);

                wps_refresh(id3, 0, false);
            }
        } else {
            button = button_get_w_tmo(HZ/5);
        }
#else
        button = button_get_w_tmo(HZ/5);
#endif


Phil
Received on 2002-10-23