Auto lower audio volume to prevent clipping

[feureau]

So, in my Zoom H4N portable audio recorder, there is an auto volume level setting that lowers the volume if the recorder detects clipping. This sometimes happen when you record someone talking, and then the room cheers and clapping insanely loudly at the end of the speech and the audio would clip like crazy. With the auto volume level setting on, the recorder would immediately reduce the volume to a level where it wouldn't clip.

Now, AGC does this, but the downside is that the AGC clamps down hard when the room becomes quiet again, raising the floor noise level and everything. The auto volume level thing does not raise the volume afterwards like AGC. It just keeps it at the lowest level so far that prevents further clipping.

Now, I know this has very limited use, but it's very useful when you just don't have the time to properly adjust the in-camera mic volume. (except on the 5D3 with the touch the back wheel to set the volume thing on the fly)

It also works great for 'lazy recording'. That is, you just want to make sure that the audio doesn't clip when you record casually. i.e. just hit record without checking the volume.

This way, we could just leave the recording level at reasonably high level all the time, and it will lower the record volume to the level that it wouldn't clip every time.


I'm sorry if this has been posted before, but I searched the forum and couldn't find anything like this.

[Rush]

I totally aggree with feareau - it is 'must have' feature. The difference with built in AGC is the ability to set upper limit for auto gain - to avoid hiss noise of maximum gain of AGC when it is quiet.

(btw, you can easily control audio gain on the fly while recording with ML's arrow shortucts - it helps a lot for me, but auto leveling will be very useful)

[dlrpgmsvc]

The correct name of this fuction, in the audio field, is exactly : LIMITER