AnalyserNode: maxDecibels property

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since April 2021.

The maxDecibels property of the AnalyserNode interface is a double value representing the maximum power value in the scaling range for the FFT analysis data, for conversion to unsigned byte values — basically, this specifies the maximum value for the range of results when using getByteFrequencyData().

Value

A double, representing the maximum decibel value for scaling the FFT analysis data, where 0 dB is the loudest possible sound, -10 dB is a 10th of that, etc. The default value is -30 dB.

When getting data from getByteFrequencyData(), any frequencies with an amplitude of maxDecibels or higher will be returned as 255.

Exceptions

IndexSizeError DOMException

Thrown if a value less than or equal to AnalyserNode.minDecibels is set.

Examples

The following example shows basic usage of an AudioContext to create an AnalyserNode, then requestAnimationFrame and <canvas> to collect frequency data repeatedly and draw a "winamp bar graph style" output of the current audio input. For more complete applied examples/information, check out our Voice-change-O-matic demo (see app.js lines 108–193 for relevant code).

js
const audioCtx = new AudioContext();
const analyser = audioCtx.createAnalyser();
analyser.minDecibels = -90;
analyser.maxDecibels = -10;

// …

analyser.fftSize = 256;
const bufferLength = analyser.frequencyBinCount;
console.log(bufferLength);
const dataArray = new Uint8Array(bufferLength);

canvasCtx.clearRect(0, 0, WIDTH, HEIGHT);

function draw() {
  drawVisual = requestAnimationFrame(draw);

  analyser.getByteFrequencyData(dataArray);

  canvasCtx.fillStyle = "rgb(0 0 0)";
  canvasCtx.fillRect(0, 0, WIDTH, HEIGHT);

  const barWidth = (WIDTH / bufferLength) * 2.5;
  let barHeight;
  let x = 0;

  for (let i = 0; i < bufferLength; i++) {
    barHeight = dataArray[i];

    canvasCtx.fillStyle = `rgb(${barHeight + 100} 50 50)`;
    canvasCtx.fillRect(x, HEIGHT - barHeight / 2, barWidth, barHeight / 2);

    x += barWidth + 1;
  }
}

draw();

Specifications

Specification
Web Audio API
# dom-analysernode-maxdecibels

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also