Smooth Output of Peakamp~

The peakamp~ object can be used to take the amplitude of one signal and have it control the amplitude of another. Peakamp~ takes a low-frequency sample of the peak amplitude of the signal, which is then smoothed by the line~ object. This gives an intuitively much more accurate representation of the audio signal one is envelope-following than does smoothing the audio signal itself, which tends to smooth out — and thus lose — all the more interesting characteristics of the signal. Here’s an example that lets you compare. When using a signal with sharp sudden changes in amplitude (e.g. a snare drum) as the control signal, the sharp attack is greatly attenuated by smoothing the audio signal, but is retained by tracking the peak amplitude.