V.U. meters

MISTERQCUE

MISTERQCUE

Not Just Anutha Brutha
For my "analog" recordings, I use an Alesis
32 and sometimes I try to determine the numerical db level of my signals prior to tracking to my Adat to try and match certain signal criteria from my previous recordings.
It's just sometimes the Peak level would hit
"red" yet sound is not clipping or distorted. Maybe I'm picky but just want to be sure I'm sending the max level amount of signal/s to adat when board says I'm "peaking and or cLipping" when in actuality I'm not.
 
My mixing board has Peak meters which to me
don't seem to be very accurate. Can n-e 1
recommend a good VU meter?
Last question, in what signal path/output would the VU be connected to. Thanks.
 
Last I heard, Peak Meters are actually "more accurate" the RMS metering, at least concerning what you see is what you get.

RMS metering can actually lead you to believe that you have more dynamic range then you do, and surely doesn't show when you actually have reached Peak Level. This is desirable (Peak Metering that is) because often, the RMS level of a mix is quite a bit lower then the Peak level of a mix. If you are recording digital, you will be far more concerned with being able to montor Peak levels because exceeding Peak limits will cause digital distortion.

What kind of console do you have?

Ed
 
The only thing you need to remember about ADAT metering is that if it hit red at some point, that only means some kind of transient hit digital zero. It may have lasted only frations of a second, but it at least reached zero. I believe that it takes a minimum of 12 samples that are OVER digital zero before you actually here digital distortion. So, on ADAT's, you can actually hit red quite a bit. It only means that you have reached digital zero, or exceeded it for less then 12 samples. If you don't HEAR distortion, it did not distort. But, be advised that low end monitoring systems, bad cabling, lousy power amps may not produce good enough sound for you to hear the distortion. So, this is a case for good monitoring speakers and amps, and good wiring.

Peak metering is still your best indication of what is actually going on in the tracking environment. Like I said in my last point, you are mostly concerned with Peak Level in digital because anything over digital 0 may cause digital distortion. RMS metering will never show transient peaks in the music, thus for digital, it is not very usable.

Ed
 
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