Patent ID: 8352052

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving digital audio data; receiving a first input to a volume control to increase a volume of the audio data; amplifying, using one or more processors, the audio data in response to the first input, where the amplifying includes increasing a gain of the audio data by a constant amount below a threshold intensity level for all of the audio data to prevent clipping of the audio data; receiving one or more subsequent inputs to the volume control to increase a volume of the amplified audio data; and determining that the increase in the volume of the amplified audio data for a subsequent input of the one or more subsequent inputs would result in clipping and when the increase in the volume of the amplified audio data would result in clipping, performing both compression and amplification of the audio data in response to the subsequent input, where performing compression includes compressing portions of the audio data that would be clipped as a result of increasing the volume of the amplified audio data and not compressing the remaining portions of the audio data.