Have the 'output limiter' independent of the DSP

[vingerha]

The Output Limiter (currently on 240beta's) is 'on' by default and one has to activate DSP to set the limiter to 'off', even if one does not want to use DSP. Suggest to make limiter 'off' by default or remove the dependency with the DSP.

[maximmaxim345]

I'd like to keep the limiter enabled by default, but I understand your point.

The limiter should not alter the audio signal unless there are very loud sounds (that would introduce clipping).
So, in all "normal" cases, having the limiter on or off should not make any difference.

Decoupling the option from the DSP settings is unfortunately not as simple as one might hope due to grouped playback. (If one player has the limiter enabled and another has it disabled, should we limit or not?)

As an alternative, how about keeping the limiter enabled and in the DSP, but displaying an indicator in the UI if it was ever "used"?
If that warning doesn't appear, you would know that the limiter hasn't altered anything about the sound.

[vingerha]

In my opinion one should not think or decide for the end-user too much and let them decide what they want to use or not. Where I appreciate to reduce the risk, I have never had any problem with clipping in 40 years toying with audio, partially self made, and I was a bit surprised that this was added. My counter-suggestion would be then to have DSP and (!) limiter on by default... I am not unhappy to turn it off :)

[maximmaxim345]

Just looked into the limiter. It was added with version 2.3.0 (music-assistant/server#1657) with the purpose of avoiding clipping in cases where volume normalization fails, to still have an "acceptable" listening experience.

I'm also not against adding an option to disable the output limiter.
The main hurdle is how to handle this with grouped playback.
Having the DSP enabled by default (but with limiter on by default), would disable the DSP once syncing with another player (with the majority of player providers).
In that scenario the limiter would still be enabled.

But thinking again, the existing volume normalization option (in the player settings) of the group leader override the option set by all other group members.

So moving the limiter settings from the DSP to the player settings menu does indeed make sense as approach. This would allow users to:

• disable limiting on a per player basis (for single device playback)
• keep the DSP settings disabled
• allow the limiter to be kept disabled for synced playback.

And the grouping behavior would still be consistent with the normalization options.

[vingerha]

Appreciate the thinking and proposal which I like but ... just to be clear, for me this is more an improvement wrt logic/ux so let's not make this too big an issue.
My (personal) view is that it should be simple to (un)do but if not...then I am just 1 person requesting this too :)

[maximmaxim345]

No problem.
My main nitpick with the current implementation is that when grouped, the limiter can not be disabled. Moving that from the DSP would solve that and additionally make the option easier to find.