Scaling Distorted Peaks in BIAS Peak

While editing a podcast in BIAS Peak 6 recently, I was disturbed to hear the audio distorting even though the peak levels were below 100%. When I opened the file in Peak 5 to double-check, I didn't hear the distortion, so I switched back to to version 5 to finish the project.

I mentioned this mystery to Mark Vail, who pointed out the new Peak 6 feature that was sabotaging me: At the bottom left of the transport window is a slider, mysteriously named "Master." Turns out it controls playback volume. When you grab the handle, Peak temporarily shows the output level in dB:

The level ranges from –infinity at the left end to +6 at the right, with unity gain in the middle. That means that if the slider handle is at 51% and you have full-level peaks in your file, they'll probably sound distorted. Because Peak hides the value when you aren't touching the handle, it's easy to introduce distortion accidentally.

This distortion is playback-only; it isn't written into the file, but I wish BIAS had colored the right half of the slider track yellow to indicate where the boost begins. Or maybe it could work like a digital camera, where the digital zoom is disabled by default and then comes in only after a brief pause.

That said, I'm glad I've finally got this figured out, so I can get back to using Peak 6, which has been a nice upgrade.