[fluid-dev] Understanding Attenuation

[Dan Eble]

I asked the following question in the Polyphone forum (http://www.polyphone-soundfonts.com/en/forum/soundfonts-help/29-understanding-attenuation) but didn’t get a conclusive answer.

I've created presets in Polyphone using a sine wave sample with 72 dB, 48 dB, and 0 dB attenuation, then rendered a 1-s tone of each (at velocity 127) with Fluidsynth, then put the wav files through Audacity's spectrum analyzer.

The difference in the peaks is only about half as much as the numbers provided to Polyphone, and I don't understand why.  Is this a suitable way to verify the effect of the attenuation parameter?

Thanks.

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Dan