Another Word For Linear?

Nice :)

Except it's the opposite way; a linear pot makes all the softs crowd at one end.

Suppose someone comes to you with a piece of audio gear with a volume knob with all its response at one end. You immediately know that some idiot subbed a linear pot for a log pot (or vice versa depending on the circuit).

While trying to explain the cause and your solution, how do you describe it? I'm looking for colloquial terms your average idiot in the street will grasp intuitively.

"The new control will operate more smoothly."

"...proportionately."

"...evenly."

TIA

Mark L. Fergerson

Use your own words - the new pot will spread the useful range of output levels over a wider range of knob positions.

Use your own words - the new pot will spread the useful range of output levels over a wider range of knob rotation.

"A more even (uniform?) response"

proportionate. It's not but they'll get that idea.

NT

"even", "proportionate", "not bunched up". Take your pick.

"The loudification effect will be more spread out instead of all the louds being concentrated at one end"

you win.

No, it might be if log pots were really log.

NT

Ah, right. Then how about:

"It'll go:

instead of:

It might help if you spoke the customers dialect:

"Your ear has a non-linear dynamic range of about 140dB. Your volume control should do the same".

"If you plant your boom box on your shoulder and aim the speaker into your ear, you don't want the tiny adjustment range to blow your ears out. In order to spread out the range, the control has to be non-linear."

"You have a cheap volume pot. Buy my better one and it will adjust and sound more better."

Seems to be a broken pot. Which looks to be quite shot. For a small price, it will sound nice, and not cost you a lot.

"Correct dosing for this application."

If they know enough for further discussion try "resistance-change per degree has to match human ear loudness perception, usually said to be a relationship where small changes are more notieable at low volumes that at high volumes".

I favor staying at all times factually correct: your PC candidates are simply wrong, meaningless at best.

Somewhere between "wrong" and "meaningless". The linear pot gives a "more even (uniform?) response" of resistance change per degree of rotation than a log pot--that IS the problem.

You do not WANT a "more even (uniform?) response", you want a response that matches (more closely) the human ear response.

I like it.

No, that's getting the customer to speak *your* dialect!

People are notoriously bad at gauging differences in "volume levels", "light intensities" -- even speeds and weights (less so) WITHOUT some numerical indicator that they can consult.

Tell the person closest to the "stereo" at a party that the music should be "twice as loud". What do you think he will do? Move the volume control from "3" to "6"? What if the control isn't labeled? Or, if there are "VU" meters on the front panel? Chances are, he'll just cautiously bump it up and look back over at *you* for confirmation.

Likewise, tell someone to make the lights "twice as bright", etc.

They don't care about the resistance between the wiper and the end terminal; or the overall gain; or the average voltage across the speaker; or the current through the lamp filament; etc. That just adds another issue that you have to explain.

Even traveling on a roadway it's hard for folks to gauge their (instantaneous) speed relative to some "reference" speed -- unless there is some "regular" feature that they can observe in passing (e.g., the stripes on the roadway).

Instead, think of how an "average idiot in the street" would describe the action (i.e., perceived results) of a "non-linear" control. Then, turn the description inside out for your "proper" control.

"Can we make everything louder than everything else?"

You might start by using the most frequent ten-hundred words listed at

You can automatically validate sentences at

Just tell them they are an idiot.

The control will properly match the response of the human ear, which is HIGHLY non-linear. The pot has an approximation of the inverse of the ear's non-linearity.

Jon