Possibly I'm overthinking this, but it seems to me that when I multiply my wav file samples by 0.5, I don't get a sound that's half as loud but considerably louder than half as loud.
I have a feeling that it's something to do with logarithms (decibels is a logarithmic scale?) but I'm not clear how to adjust wave file values to get a sound that's half or a quarter as loud etc.
Many thanks for your help!